


Synchronicity

by callowyn, thegeminisage



Series: Cambionverse [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abandonment, Angelic Grace, Angelic Possession, Childhood Trauma, Demonic Possession, Enochian, F/F, F/M, Possession, Psychic Abilities, Shtriga, Slow Burn, Team Free Will 2.0, Trauma, Trust Issues, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 16:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10494672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callowyn/pseuds/callowyn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegeminisage/pseuds/thegeminisage
Summary: For almost half a year, Ben Braeden's search for the missing Sam and Dean has been as difficult and fruitless as it has been lonely. It's only when Ben runs into Claire Novak, who claims she met the Winchesters herself once, that things begin to change. Claire is sharp, distant, and impossible to read, but she and Ben have more in common than either of them realize, and slowly, they begin to find their places in the hunting world and with each other. But Claire keeps a lot of secrets—most painful, some dangerous...and some that might tear them apart.





	1. October

**Author's Note:**

> IT'S FINALLY HEEEEERE! Today (which is technically the 29th here) we're proud to present to you the reduxed version of Synchronicity, a Ben & Claire adventures prequel to Cambion. The original version of this fic was published on August 5th, 2011, and only about 5.5k words long, something Liz banged out in a few hours. This version is much longer and we're happy to say includes many more characters in the wider scope of the verse! Additionally, like our last published fic, Enter Night, this is happening REAL TIME—the fic ends on this very day in history, Jesse's 19th birthday. He is...not in this fic, but we wish him a happy birthday all the same.
> 
> (If you're new here, you may want to check out the rest of the series first!)
> 
>  **Warnings:** This story includes depictions of graphic violence, gore involving both living people and dead bodies, selective mutism, trauma related to firearms, past parental death, and abandonment issues. There are light mentions of cannibalism, child death, child abuse, and homophobia, and there is a lot of very heavy stuff involving possesion, which is sometimes metaphorically compared to rape/sexual abuse. If we missed anything, please let us know, and we'll be happy to update this section!

When Ben was little, Halloween meant dressing up as a superhero and eating so much candy that his stomach hurt. Now, at seventeen-and-change, he's skulking around the children's ward of St. Martin's Hospital in search of the shtriga that's been sucking the life out of its young victims for the past month. Dealing with actual monsters takes a serious shine off the holiday.

When he finally finds his quarry, Ben is startled to see the shtriga feeding on a girl who looks old enough to be in college. But there's no time to wonder who she is or what she did to attract its attention: wispy light has already begun to glow behind her wide blue eyes and it'll be gone if he waits too much longer. Ben shoots the shtriga in the head. It sputters, fizzing, and collapses at her feet.

The girl looks down at the shriveled body, then at Ben. "What kind of bullet was that?"

Ben's used to civilians who are a little more grateful and a lot more bewildered. "Do you even know what that was?"

"Shtriga," she says. "Albanian, feeds on the life-force of the young." She kneels down, rifles through the pile of dead shtriga without a hint of disgust, and pulls out a long knife. "And apparently it's not as vulnerable to consecrated iron as I was led to believe."

"You gotta get it while it's feeding," Ben says, sort of dazed. She's beautiful—lean and blonde with a stare that could cut steel—but something feels a little bit off about her, something he can't quite place. Having the life-force nearly drained out of her doesn't seem to be slowing her down much.

"I'll remember that." The girl moves toward the door, scooping up a worn blue backpack and slinging it over one shoulder.

"Wait," Ben says. "That's it? You're just leaving?"

She gives him a sharp look. "I didn't ask for your help."

Ben puts his gun back in his jacket. "I didn't ask for your permission."

There's a slight hesitation when she opens the door. "Someone probably heard that gunshot," she says, and leaves.

"You're welcome," Ben mutters. She's right, though; there's clearly a dead _something_ in here with Ben, and salting and burning the fucker isn't exactly feasible in a hospital room. Quickly Ben shoves open the window and puts on a pair of latex gloves. Grimacing, he lifts the shtriga and—after checking for security cameras—dumps it to the ground four stories below.

It lands in the perfect spot, concealed behind some thick bushes, and nobody seems to have noticed the thud. He turns the gloves inside-out and pockets them, just in case, then saunters out of the room as though he has every right to be here.

"Excuse me!" a man's voice calls.

Ben counts to three before glancing over his shoulder. A hospital security guard is waving in his direction. Ben speeds up, hopefully not enough to be noticeable, and ducks down the first hallway he sees. In the reflection of an open door, he sees the guard chasing after him. _Always act like you haven't done anything wrong_ , Dean's voice says in his head, but it's all Ben can do not to break into a sprint. A hand clamps down on his shoulder and spins Ben around, and then—

"There you are," says a different voice, so warm and relieved that for a minute Ben doesn't recognize the blonde girl he just saved. She tugs his arm, subtly pulling him away from the guard who's just caught up with them. "You have to come back, she's fully dilated and they say it'll be any minute now."

Ben's brain says _duh?_ but he manages not to let that out of his mouth. If the girl's tightening fingers on his arm are any indication, she's not impressed by his acting ability.

"Miss, are you with him?" says the security guard, looking nonplussed.

"His sister is having a baby," she gushes at him, still shifting Ben out of grabbing reach. "They said it could start crowning any minute now and we need him to man the video camera!" She looks the guard over and tilts her head. "Was there some kind of problem?"

The guard looks faintly ill. "Uh, I guess not." He straightens up and looks at Ben. "Don't go getting into any trouble, now."

"Yes sir," Ben says, and tries to follow the girl toward the elevator in the manner of someone about to videotape a baby coming out of their sister's vagina.

As soon as the elevator doors close, the girl drops his arm and leans against the far wall, rubbing her temples. Ben can't find any trace of the cheery smile or perky voice; it's like someone flipped a switch.

"Thanks," he says as they descend.

"I don't like debts," she replies.

Ben offers her a smile. "Don't suppose that means you'll help me burn the body?"

Her blue eyes widen. "What?"

"You know, the shtriga?" Ben mimes a cowl. "It's dead, but I still gotta drag it out of those bushes and burn the thing before anyone finds it. Just thought it might be nice to have someone watching my six for a change." She doesn't answer; he didn't really expect her to. He sighs. "Forget it."

The elevator opens at the ground floor, where a nurse makes impatient gestures for them to clear the way. The girl walks ahead of Ben toward the exit, and he figures this is the last he'll ever see of her, but she stops just outside the door and turns back.

"Look. What's your name?"

Ben stuffs his hands in his pockets. The name on his ID says Stewart Kirk, but he doesn't think that would fly with her. "Ben."

"Ben." She crosses her arms and looks him dead in the eye. "What exactly do you want from me, Ben?"

_How about your number?_ he does not say. Ben's not the most perceptive person, but even he can recognize a bad idea when it's standing in front of him and glaring. "Like I said, I'd appreciate some help with the cleanup. But I'm not gonna try and make you stay if you don't want to."

The girl seems—not placated, but more confused than suspicious now. "And if I help you get rid of the shtriga, then we're even?"

"Totally square," Ben assures her.

An ambulance pulls out of the lot behind her, and she watches it until it passes. Then she turns back to him. "Did you say you had to drag it out of the _bushes_?"

He waves toward the spot where he's pretty sure the shtriga fell. "After you left," Ben says, "I kind of—threw it out the window."

That startles a real laugh out of her, and though she subdues herself quickly, it was totally worth it. Ben grins at her. In response, she gives the tiniest of nods.

"So uh," Ben says, "do I get to know _your_ name?"

She begins to walk away again, but this time she lets him catch up with her. "Claire," she says over her shoulder. "I'm Claire."

 

 

* * *

# S Y N C H R O N I C I T Y

* * *

 

 

Between the two of them, they get the shtriga stuffed in a trash bag and into the back of Ben's truck without anyone the wiser. Ben drives to the outskirts of town with Claire in shotgun.

"It's actually better to do this kind of thing while it's light out," he explains. "People can see fire in the dark from a lot further away than you'd think. Good way to get the cops called on you."

"Lucky tonight is Halloween, then," says Claire, watching the sun set. "They'll have their hands full with the fake monsters."

In the overgrown lot behind an abandoned auto mechanic, Ben scrapes a patch of ground clear of weeds and arranges the pile of scrap wood that will serve as fuel. By the time he's finished, Claire has hauled the shtriga's body out to be burned.

"Do we deliver a eulogy?" she asks dryly.

"Just salt and lighter fluid," Ben says, liberally dousing the pile in both. He offers Claire his box of kitchen matches. "Want to do the honors?"

For a second it looks like she's about to say something. Instead, she takes the matches and sets the corpse ablaze with ruthless efficiency.

Ben watches Claire while Claire watches the fire. "Have you been doing this long?"

A shrug. "Finding that shtriga was an accident. But I've known about monsters for a long time."

"Yeah?" Ben fumbles for his wallet. "You ever heard of the Winchesters?" He hands her the picture he's been carrying around all these long months. "They're hunters, like us. Some of the best."

Claire takes the picture, silent. Ben scans for any hint of reaction.

"They went missing this past spring," he continues. The photo was taken longer ago than that, back before Ben hit his growth spurt; Sam and Dean tower over him with their arms around his shoulders. Ben's rifle didn't make it into the picture, but he knows exactly where he's holding it out of the frame, so proud of finally being able to hit every bottle on the fence. He clears his throat. "I'm trying to find out what happened. You seen them?"

Claire's fingers tighten on the photograph. Finally she says, "You know Sam and Dean Winchester?"

Ben's heart starts pounding. "Do _you_?"

For a long moment Claire doesn't say anything. It takes everything Ben has not to grab her and shake the answer out of her, but if he pushes too hard she might decide not to tell him anything. He doesn't know what she's searching his expression for, but at last she seems to find it.

"When I was eleven," she says, "a monster destroyed my family. The Winchesters showed up not long after."

"Where?" he asks immediately. "What kind of monster?"

Claire hesitates. "The kind of monster like nothing I've ever seen." She gives back the picture, hands balling by her sides. "I thought they would kill it then and there, but it got away. And I was just supposed to go back to my life, knowing that somewhere out there is this _thing_ that—" Her voice cracks, and she bites her lip into silence.

"But you can't go back," Ben says quietly. "You find out monsters are real and then it's like every nightmare you ever had is following you around. Not much you can do except hunt them, try to make the world a safer place for the next kid."

Slowly, Claire meets his eyes and nods. "Is that what happened to you?" she asks. "Is that why you know the Winchesters?"

Ben gives a tight smile. "Changelings. I was eight." He stares into the shtriga's smoldering embers and for a minute he's watching the nest-mother go up in flames all over again. "Dean was—well, it's kind of complicated, but he's saved my life three times over at least. Taught me everything I know about hunting, too." His fingers tighten on the photograph. "At the very least I owe it to find out what _happened_ to him."

There's not enough left to call this a pyre anymore, just some ashes and a few scraps of cloth. Behind them the sun has long finished setting. Claire shakes her hair back, tucking one gold strand behind her ear, and Ben thinks _that's it, we're done, she's gone_.

"Hey, can I give you a ride or something?" he asks. "Back to wherever you're staying?" He knows better than to ask her for anything more, but at least he can leave her someplace safe. At least he can know he saved this one person.

Her mouth twitches. "Haven't decided where that is yet."

Ben looks at the dark sky, then back at Claire. "Are you not—don't you have someplace to go?"

Another shrug. He thinks about the backpack she's been carrying around, straps worn down, sides stuffed a little too full, and a lifetime of Braeden hospitality lessons come bubbling to the surface.

"You can stay in my hotel room," he says. "Not like—I don't mean, not like that, but tonight's already paid for and the front desk guy definitely doesn't give a shit. I'm just saying, if you need someplace to crash, there's a spare bed. That's all."

"I don't need charity," Claire says.

Ben crosses his arms. "But I bet even you need to sleep sometimes." It's stupid, treating her like—like Katie, like someone who'll have his back, when he just met her a few hours ago and the only thing he knows about her is that she hunts monsters too. But she knows Sam and Dean. "It's just one night."

He expects more argument. What he gets is a sharp nod. "All right," she says. "One night."

Ben starts towards the truck, and she follows. "You, uh, had dinner yet?" he asks.

"No," Claire says forcefully, turning down the very idea rather than answering the question.

"Come on," Ben wheedles. "I saw this pancake joint over by the exit ramp, and hunting always makes me crave carbs—"

"I don't like pancakes." She looks like she'd be more than happy to fight him about it, in what he's already thinking of as her default mode.

"Or we could go for burgers," Ben hastily amends, holding up his hands in surrender. "I'm cool with whatever."

"Go with driving," Claire says, and gets in truck.


	2. November

A shrill ringtone pierces into Ben's dreams. He grunts, kicking at the covers, and opens his eyes to meet a bright blue gaze right across the nightstand.

"I'm guessing you don't want me to answer," Claire says, and hands him a phone. "How many of these do you have?"

The phone isn't Ben's, which is still on the nightstand, but a beaten old flip that he'd stuffed into his duffel bag months ago and forgotten about. His fingers close around it automatically. This phone used to belong to Bobby Singer.

"Don't go through my stuff," Ben says, but that's a conversation they can have later—if this is a hunt, even a few minutes of response time could cost someone their life. More importantly, if this person knows Bobby, they might have a lead on the Winchesters. "Hello?"

"You're not Bobby," says a woman's voice.

"No, I'm," Ben says, then doesn't have a good answer. "This is Bobby's phone, but—"

"I need to speak with him," the woman says. She's got some sort of English accent, but Ben doesn't recognize her voice. "Put him on, please."

Ben rubs his hand over his face, uncomfortably aware that Claire is watching him swallow over and over before forcing the words out. "Bobby's dead."

There's a long pause. "Who is this?"

"I'm Ben," he says. "I'm Dean's—well, sort of, Dean Winchester? I knew Bobby, I—I was the one who found him. Sam and Dean are missing." He takes a breath and tries to sound like a real hunter and not a scared little kid. "If you've got a case, though, I can help look into it."

"I met the Winchesters once," says the woman after a moment. "Like sons to Bobby, those two. I don't recall any of them mentioning a kid."

Ben takes a deep breath. "I was old enough to build his pyre," he says. "And if you need Bobby, I'm all you've got."

Another pause as she considers this. Then, finally: "My name is Tamara. Last winter Bobby asked me to look for a specific pattern of demonic omens, but he wouldn't tell me why. Just found those same omens and a body showing signs of possession in Nebraska. Thought he'd like to know."

"What town?" Ben asks, kicking off the covers. Claire's eyes follow him across the room, but he ignores her. How far away is Nebraska?

"Place called Alliance. I'm on my way there now."

Ben reaches for his real phone and calls up a map. "I'm in Delaware," he says aloud, already feeling antsy. "What is that, two days' drive? I can make it there by Tuesday, meet you at the site."

Tamara pauses. "I doubt there's much you could do."

Ben can hear the subtle emphasis on the word _you_ , and he bristles. "Dean taught me everything he knows."

"All right," she says after a moment, skeptical but not unkind. " _If_ I'm not through by the time you get out here, I suppose it couldn't hurt to have another pair of hands." She rattles off another number for him to call, and Ben writes it down. Just before he's about to hang up, she says, "I'm sorry for your loss."

Ben flinches—stranger or not, Tamara's the first person who's said that since he left home. "Thanks."

Claire's watching him when he hangs up, and Ben becomes acutely aware that he's wearing nothing but Captain America boxers. All she says is, "Be where in two days?"

"Alliance, Nebraska." Ben casually moves to his duffel to pick out some clothes. "You know about Bobby Singer? One of his friends found signs of a demon there. Might have something to do with the Winchesters."

"That was fast."

Ben pops his head out of a t-shirt and grins. "Maybe you're good luck."

Claire looks away, and Ben falters. He meant it as a joke, but after six months of nothing, what are the odds of finding two leads on the Winchesters in as many days? What if running into Claire wasn't actually coincidence?

"I guess you're moving on too, huh?" he asks, forcedly casual. "Got a particular direction in mind?"

Claire picks at the seam of her jeans. "West is as good as any," she says. "I know a thing or two about demons, if you don't mind some company."

Ben's pulse kicks into higher gear and he has the absurd worry she'll hear it. "Sounds like fun."

But after they're well out of town, past the Delaware border but not yet to the big cities, Ben pulls over and points a water pistol at Claire's face. "Okay, talk," he says. "Why are you _really_ here?"

Claire's hands ball into fists. "Is that a squirt gun?"

"It's full of holy water," Ben says coldly. "And there's more where that came from."

"I'm not possessed," she snaps. "I'm human. That's _it_."

Ben digs around for the flask he keeps hidden in his jacket, his aim with the water pistol never wavering. The flask is silver on the outside, holy on the inside, and almost as good as his bracelet for testing monsters. He tosses it into her lap. "Prove it."

Her skin doesn't blister when she picks it up. Eyes locked on Ben's, Claire takes a long swig. He watches her throat move as she swallows.

Nothing happens.

"Well," Ben says after a long uncomfortable silence, and lowers the squirt gun. "Okay. My bad, then. Sorry about that."

Claire doesn't visibly relax, tossing the flask back to him. "Why did you think I was possessed?"

"Because." Ben can feel his face heating up, which is deeply unfair; Dean would have been proud to see how careful he's being. "Because you knew the Winchesters, and then the very next day I get a call from the blue that might lead me to them, and then you say you want to come along—"

"If you don't want my help, then let me out of the car."

"No, no, I want you here, it's just—" Ben flaps his hands. "No one's that lucky, you know? I mean, _I'm_ sure not. So I got suspicious."

"Trust me," says Claire, ice in every syllable. "If there was anything else in my body, you'd know."

"I said I was sorry." Ben stows his weapon, but he doesn't start the truck back up, not yet. "I just—I don't know much about you. You're a hunter, right? Have you been doing this long?"

She crosses her arms. "Define long."

Ben refuses to let her irritate him—he did just point a gun in her face, after all. "Like, for me," he says, "I've known about monsters since I was eight, but it wasn't really until I—" _ran away from home_ , his mind supplies, but he replaces that— "started looking for Dean that I actually got to use all the stuff he taught me."

"So this is what you do?" says Claire, encompassing everything Ben has ever accomplished with the tilt of a single eyebrow. "Drive around the country, fighting evil?"

"It's not about hunting things. It's about saving people." Ben sets his jaw. "Like I saved you."

"What about Sam and Dean?" Claire asks.

Ben keeps his eyes on hers. "The way I see it, with them and Bobby gone we're down three pretty great hunters. The least I can do is try to pick up some of their slack until I find them."

Claire sighs. "Here's what you need to know about me," she says at last. "I don't like demons, and I don't have anywhere else to be right now. I also wouldn't be opposed to seeing Dean Winchester again myself." She studies him for a moment. "Am I coming with you or not?"

Ben wets his lips. There's something about this girl he just can't put his finger on. Aside from being brash, cold, distant, and having one of the most soul-searching stares of anybody Ben's ever met, there's something about the way she says Dean's name. It's the same way Marie and Katie always said it, and they never really liked him, as hard as they tried to get along for Ben's sake. Maybe Claire wants to give him a piece of her mind for letting that monster that killed her family get away. Truth be told, she's probably trouble.

But Ben's not ready to be alone again. Even this strange rude girl is better than no one at all. If she's willing to stay with him a little while longer, he won't say no.

"Yes," Ben says.

Claire gives a tiny nod, and settles back into her seat. "Then drive."

* * *

Ben and Claire pull up to a house on Lakefield Drive just after sunset, where Tamara is waiting for them. She's small and black, which Ben wasn't expecting, and also looks like she could gut him without breaking a sweat, which he absolutely was. The single-story farmhouse is wide and low-slung, tucked behind a couple of scraggly rhododendrons, but by now the police must be done investigating because there's no crime scene tape across the door. Tamara greets them with a flask of holy water, nods when neither of them flinch at the taste, then holds up a police report.

"The possessed man was named Stephen Glenn," says Tamara. Claire takes the folder before Ben has a chance. "Lived alone, but a neighbor saw that he hadn't been keeping his grass cut—the kind of thing people notice out here, I suppose. Called the boys in blue to check on him, and, well. Body was lying dead in the kitchen."

_No, it was the library, baseball cap knocked off, Ben had never seen Bobby's head bare before and it was a weird thing to notice but his brain didn't want to let him see the claw marks that tore Bobby's belly into shreds and spilled him all across the hardwood floor—_

An elbow knocks against his and Ben snaps out of the memory. He looks over at Claire, but she's studying the police report and seems not to have even noticed his lapse, let alone that she just touched him. Ben coughs and says, "How'd you know he was possessed, if the police got here first?"

Tamara raises her perfectly-sculpted eyebrows. "Faked my way into the morgue," she says. "Sulfur all over him. I know what a body looks like when a demon's been inside."

 _So do I_ , Ben doesn't say. It was a stupid question.

"Were there any unusual marks?" Claire asks. "Sigils on his body? Mutilations?"

"There wasn't much you could see on the outside, but the man's insides were turned to soup." Tamara's face is grim in the weak orange streetlight. "That demon didn't intend to let him survive the experience."

"Then we've—" Ben clears his throat. "We've got to find it. Stop it before it takes anyone else."

"Why d'you think I came?" Tamara goes to her car, gesturing the two of them to follow. "The omens I saw, the ones Bobby asked about—that's the sign of some serious firepower. There's nothing I'd like more than to track down that evil bastard and send it right back to the Pit where it belongs."

She opens the trunk and pops out a hidden compartment. Inside are rows and rows of pale wooden stakes, giving off a scent Ben recognizes at once.

"Palo santo?" he asks, touching the disk of his bracelet in awe. "Holy crap, where'd you get all this?"

"Not many people know about palo santo," says Tamara, and for the first time she looks approving. "Bobby Singer taught you that, did he?"

"Yeah, he had a tree of it at his house, Sam said—"

"What is that?" Claire interrupts.

Ben turns back to look at her, started by the strain in her voice. Claire's stopped a few feet up the road, hands clenched at her sides, and there's a muscle standing out in her neck. Her eyes stay fixed on the trunk as she repeats the question. "That wood. Palo santo. What is it?"

"Holy wood," says Tamara before Ben can answer, and he knows he's not the only one seeing that hard glint to her eyes. "It burns demons when they touch it. Stab them with a stake of it, it keeps them pinned until you can exorcise them."

She picks up a stake and holds it out to Claire—hilt-first, but no less a challenge. Ben just saw Claire drink holy water two minutes ago but he still holds his breath as her hand comes up, willing her not to burn—

Claire takes the stake. "Thanks," she says. "I'd never heard of it before." And she turns and walks toward the house like nothing happened.

Tamara watches her go. "Known her long?" she asks, with a lightness that doesn't fool Ben a bit.

Ben shrugs. "I picked her up on a hunt," he says, which isn't actually an answer. He doesn't know why, but he wants to lie for Claire.

"Keep an eye on her," Tamara advises. "She may not be a demon, but normal people shouldn't have a problem with this wood." She hands Ben a stake too. "I'll go in the front. You two take the back, and come get me if you find anything. You can pick a lock, I presume?"

Ben puffs up a little. "'Course. Since I was a kid."

"Run along, then," Tamara says. "I don't think I want her poking 'round in there alone."

As it happens, Tamara didn't have anything to worry about, because Claire is waiting for Ben. "It's locked."

"Not a problem," Ben says. Picking locks was one of the first things he'd mastered during his first summer at Bobby's, when he was still having trouble with words. He's actually pretty quick at it, but of course his time's got nothing on Dean's. He clicks on his flashlight to find the doorknob and kneels down to get at the lock. "I can teach you this," he offers. "It's not too hard to pick up once you get a handle on the basics." Then he remembers he has no idea how long he and Claire will be traveling together. If this hunt leads Ben to Sam and Dean, it might not be long at all. As much as he wants to find them, he'd be kind of sorry to see her go.

She doesn't say anything. The lock clicks open, and Ben eases the door open and slips inside, Claire on his heels.

There's something familiar about the smell when Ben first steps into the house, making him grip his stake of palo santo tighter as Claire crosses the threshold behind him. It's sulfur, he realizes, noxious and choking like the demon that left it—but beneath that is the sour smell of a dead body that rotted for days before anyone found it. It smells like Bobby's. Ben swallows hard.

Aside from sulfur lining every windowsill, it looks like any normal house; there's an empty pet food dish in the kitchen, a dusty room full of Star Wars memorabilia at the end of the hallway, and landscapes hung all over the walls. In the living room are photos of the person who lived here and someone Ben assumes has to be his husband, from the way they stay close to each other and grow older in each frame. The demon's victim as happy here—he had a good life, and he didn't deserve this. No one does.

Ben follows Claire to the second floor, watching for any sign of demonic activity—watching, too, how Claire keeps shifting her grip on the stake of palo santo, like it hurts her fingertips to be holding it.

"Claire, seriously, what is up with you and that wood?" Ben hisses once they're out of Tamara's earshot. "I've been wearing palo santo around you like an entire day now, and you've never reacted like this."

"Is that what that is?" Claire says distractedly. She rubs her temple with her free hand, turning the stake back and forth with the other.

Ben stops. "Claire."

He sees the muscle of her jaw clench. "Look, I'm human, all right?" she says. "I'm not possessed. I just have this—ability. To sense things sometimes."

"You're a psychic?" says Ben, thinking that might explain quite a bit. "Why didn't you say anything before?"

"It wasn't relevant," Claire snaps. "It's not like I read palms and tell the future. I'm just able to feel when I'm in the presence of something evil." She meets his eyes, one brow quirking the slightest bit. "And I get migraines when someone lies to me."

"I'm not lying!" Ben says immediately, which makes him sound exactly like a liar and an idiot besides. Not the point. "Are you saying that stake is evil? Is Tamara possessed?"

"No, Tamara is human," Claire says with certainty. "The wood..."

Ben frowns at the vacant look in her eyes. "Is it hurting you?"

Claire gives a sharp laugh. "Not on purpose." She rolls her shoulders, customary cool settling back into place. "I can feel whatever makes the wood holy, and I wasn't expecting it. I'm fine."

Under other circumstances, Ben would tell her he knows all about how palo santo forms—would repeat Sam's explanation about the tree that sprung up in Bobby's yard almost overnight, the one that marks an angel's grave—but Claire's face has gone smooth as glass and he doubts she wants to hear a single word. "As long as you're sure," he says instead. "Just, give a holler if you sense any hardcore evil, okay?"

Claire eases open the door to her left and doesn't respond.

They don't find anything in the first room—it looks like an art studio, no whiff of sulfur under the paint smell and nothing that seems to set off Claire's evil detector—but when they get to the master bedroom, Claire stiffens and makes a beeline for the bedside table. Ben unholsters his gun.

"What is it?"

Claire opens the drawer and peers inside. "Hardcore evil," she says.

It's a coin of some sort, made of a dull bronze-ish metal and about the size of a nickel. Ben can't sense whatever Claire can about its intentions, but the scratched-on sigils make clear that this is something ancient. He leans closer, trying to make out the script, and reaches out to bring it into the light.

Claire catches his hand. "When I said evil," she says, "that means don't touch it."

"Right," says Ben, hoping she can't feel the way his pulse sped up at the unexpected touch. It suddenly strikes him anew that _she can tell when he is lying_. "Right, okay, we should—"

"Does your phone have a flashlight?" Claire interrupts, letting go of him. Ben seizes the change of subject.

"Yeah, course. You need it?" It occurs to him that he's not even sure Claire has a phone, let alone having her number. If she disappeared he'd have no idea how to find her again. Ben fumbles in his pocket and holds out his phone. "Here."

"Thanks." She swipes the light on and proceeds to tune Ben out entirely, squinting at the coin like she can actually read what it says.

Downstairs, Ben hears a floorboard creak. His gun is up in an instant, hunter's reflexes trained toward the door, until he remembers that they didn't come here alone.

"Hey, Tamara!" he calls. "We found something!"

Behind him, Claire stands up. "Ben," she says in an undertone, and he turns to her immediately. "Could you tell her you were the one who found the coin? She's already suspicious of me and I don't want her knowing about...what I can do."

Maybe the request itself should make him suspicious, but Ben can easily imagine why she might not want to out herself to an unknown hunter. It's not Claire's fault she's psychic. "Sure, yeah," he says. "I can do that."

Tamara appears just a few moments later, her own palo santo stake held before her like a knife. "What is it?"

"I found some sort of really old coin thing," says Ben, pointing to the drawer without looking at Claire. "I dunno what it is, but it definitely doesn't belong here."

"Let me see." Tamara circles the table cautiously—the way a real hunter would, Ben thinks with a pang of shame—but after an initial examination, she must think it's safe, because she plucks up the coin and shows them the other side. "It's a spy-coin," she says, tracing out the symbols along the coin's edge. "Definitely demonic, very rare. I've never seen one outside books." Abruptly she looks up at the two of them. "Did you hear anything coming from this coin? Any noise at all?"

"Not a thing," says Ben without a pause. "It was just sitting there when I opened the drawer." And that's technically not a lie, he thinks aggressively in Claire's direction, in case she accuses him of giving her headaches on purpose. At Tamara's soft curse, he adds, "Is it supposed to?"

"Yes and no," says Tamara. "You see this closed circle, there?" She points to the middle of the coin. "That tells you this is the listener's side—the receiving end of the telephone, if you like. Somewhere out there is a matching coin with the circle open, transmitting to this one. If we could hear the other end, we'd know who our demon was spying on."

Claire regards the coin warily. "What does it mean that we can't hear anything?"

Tamara grunts and closes her fist around the coin. "Means whoever it was found the other end and destroyed it."

 _Hunters_. Who else would even be able to recognize a coin like that, much less get rid of it? Ben feel like he's at the edge of a vast conspiracy, and he embraces the thought because demons with plans can be predicted. A conspiracy means Dean and Sam disappeared for a reason.

"What's the range on that thing?" he asks, peering out the dark window to the empty street beyond. "You think whoever it was is nearby?"

"No way to tell." Tamara pockets the coin. "I'm more worried about what that demon did when it was found out. If it abandoned its post, it could be anywhere by now."

"It would want a new body," says Claire quietly. "If it's still on earth, it's looking for someone to possess."

In Ben's memory, a demon speaks with his mother's voice: _Exorcise me now. She's just a dead meatsuit_.

Tamara nods. "There's a chance it stayed in town. I've already spoken to the sheriff, but I'll go back tomorrow and see if anyone else has gone missing lately, any strange occurrences."

"What are we supposed to do?" Ben asks, and hates how useless it makes him sound.

Tamara sizes them both up. "You're too young for FBI," she says bluntly. "It's best I go alone."

"I'm not that young!" Ben protests, and Claire shoots him a look, but Tamara holds up a hand.

"I'll not have you blowing my cover, and that's final," she says. "But it's clear Bobby taught you a thing or two. This was a good find."

"Dean," Ben mumbles. "It was Dean."

Tamara's face softens, just a little. "All right. By any chance, did Dean teach you how to track omens?"

Ben rubs his chest where, hidden under his shirt, there's an anti-possession symbol tattooed over his heart. He can rattle off an exorcism like nobody's business and he could bless water in his sleep, but the most aggressive thing he ever learned was how to draw a devil's trap. Dean wanted to make sure Ben could keep demons _away_ ; there was never any reason to show him how to find one. "No," Ben admits. "But I'd like to learn."

"First thing tomorrow, I'll show you how it's done," Tamara promises. "It's tedious, I won't lie to you, but maybe while I'm out searching you two will get a fix on where our friend went next."

* * *

Tamara is right about one thing: it is tedious. She stops by the hotel room bright and early, runs briskly through how to read a weather map, points out six different things that Ben doesn't quite see and then leaves them to it.

Claire turns out to be a natural. Ben, not so much.

" _Ugh_ ," he says, just before lunchtime. He leans back on the bed and lets his tablet fall on his face. "I'm going to go blind and I _still_ won't understand low pressure systems."

Claire doesn't look up from Tamara's laptop. "They only matter if they're localized."

"See, that is exactly what I'm talking about. It's like you're speaking ancient Greek." Ben scoots off the bed and wanders over to Claire, peering over her shoulder. The words on her screen jump around when he looks at them, and it takes him a minute to realize they literally are not English. "Wait, you speak Spanish?"

Claire blinks, like she hadn't even noticed. "I'm...good with languages."

"And I'm dyslexic," Ben says mournfully. He'd been working on an English paper before he left Marie's about why Hamlet wasn't as smart as he thought he was. It had been going pretty well, maybe even well enough to scrape him a B in the class. Dropping out of junior year and never coming back put an end to those plans.

They work through the rest of the day like that, ordering pizza for lunch and eating the same box cold for dinner. The maps remain despairingly empty. Sometimes Claire switches devices with him to try and parse out the weather reports Ben can't read, and Ben spends one of his breaks flipping through Tamara's records to put off actually working. _These_ Ben can read, signals lighting up the entire map for most of 2015. These omens are what Bobby told Tamara to look for, the ones that would eventually bring her to Alliance. Ben keeps flipping, watching the omens get worse and worse each passing month.

"Man, did you notice anything weird going on last winter?" he asks after a while. "It's like, January: doomsday imminent. February: doomsday even more imminent. March: practically the apocalypse all over again! And April—" Ben blinks and flips back. Sits up, slow. "Uh."

Claire spares him a glance. "What?"

"In April there's nothing. No demons at all." Did Tamara forget to load this set? But no, here and there he spots a few, right near the start of the month. Ben flips back slower, day by day. "The omens get worse and worse, and someone _huge_ must've come out to play on March 29th, and then they just—stop. Like someone flipped a switch." In the back of his head, Ben's hunting instinct is clanging like a bell. Shakily he flips back to the 29th, scanning the map.

"There's Alliance," Claire says behind him. "Look at the storm they had that day."

Ben nods, but his eyes have fallen on another patch of red: Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Whatever came to Nebraska could have been there too. Could have been whatever made Sam and Dean vanish, could have left Bobby smeared all over his library like so much raw meat—

"We gotta find it." Ben chokes back his grief. "Tamara should have—this is _it_ , I know it is, March 29th was just a few days before Dean didn't call me!"

"You think this has to do with the Winchesters?" Claire asks carefully.

"Think about it!" Ben says, pacing the little hotel room and kicking up dust. "We know the demon was spying on somebody, and whoever it was knew enough to destroy the coin once they found it. That means hunters were here." This next thought is ridiculous, too hopeful; he can't help but say it anyway. "Maybe they, maybe they _met_ the demon, and whatever it was doing was so dangerous that Dean _couldn't_ pick up the phone..."

Claire's face is almost pitying, and it stings more than Ben thought it would. "The Winchesters know how to kill demons," she says. "And from what I know about Dean, danger doesn't really stop him."

Ben drops down hard on his bed. When Dean missed that first call, he'd been sure it meant Dean had forgotten about him at last. Never once did it cross his mind that the reason Dean didn't call was because he _couldn't_ , because Claire is right: Dean Winchester wouldn't let danger stop him. Which means whatever happened to him and Sam must have been really, catastrophically bad. If Ben had just called Dean sooner instead of obsessing over whether he'd bother them, if he hadn't been so insecure and _stupid_ , maybe he'd know where they are right now.

"The dates match up," he says finally. "I know you think I'm chasing shadows and seeing what I need to see, but they _do_. The last time I talked to Dean was a few days before the 29th and the first time I was supposed to hear from him and didn't was just a few days after."

Gently, Claire closes the laptop. "Did you call anyone else?"

"Bobby wasn't answering his phone either. So I drove to South Dakota." Ben laughs and covers his eyes. "I found what was left of him in the library."

He doesn't elaborate. Why would it help her to know about Bobby's blank stare and wide-open mouth, the blood tacky and cold on his fingers, the flies? There were guts splashed all the way up the walls. All those books he and Sam and Dean were going to scan and put online, ruined. He used them as kindling on the pyre because you can't leave any of the body behind. It's been six months but he can still smell the smoke that hung in the air after that sorry hunter's funeral, attended by one.

And after that...he couldn't go back to Cicero. Couldn't face his aunt Marie, the identical twin of Ben's dead mother, who'd be there waiting for him with a broken heart and a shrink's prescription because she doesn't believe monsters are real. Couldn't go to Katie, for all she's become like a sister to him, because when Ben turned to her during one of his fights with Marie and said _tell her I'm not crazy,_ Katie stayed silent.

Instead there's this. One case after another, too many people Ben couldn't save because he's not as good as Dean, nights spent in shitty motel rooms or in the cab of his truck but always by himself. And Dean had tried to warn him, hadn't he? What a dark, _lonely_ road it was to be a hunter. Ben just hadn't listened.

"This is demon my first lead," Ben finally says. "This is my _only_ lead. Even if they _died_ , I just want to _know_ that. I just want to know what happened to him." He clenches his fists. "I mean, how would you feel if your dad just up and vanished overnight?"

Claire looks stricken for the first time since he's met her. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out.

There's a knock on the motel door. "It's me," Tamara calls, and Claire hurries to let her in, face hidden.

Ben rubs his face and tries to sound professional. "How'd it go?"

"Stephen's husband died in March," Tamara answers, sitting heavily on the chair by the door. "Freak accident with a ladder. Our lad here up and quit his job that same week. His friends all say he stopped talking to them around that time too, but they chalked it up to grief and eventually stopped trying. I'd bet ten quid that's when the demon took him." She sighs and leans back. "After that, the trail's cold."

"In March," Ben says, sitting up straighter. "What day?"

Tamara flips through her notebook. "30th, 31st, something like that. Why?"

"I _told_ you!" Ben exclaims, then remembers it's well past dark and he should lower his voice. "I was looking at your records of last year and the whole map just lights up on March 29th. Not just here, but Bobby's, too. Something happened that day!"

Tamara regards him for a long moment. "I figured whatever happened, he took care of it. Now you're telling me it took care of him?"

"And Sam, and Dean," Ben says. "But if we can find this demon, make it talk—" He puts both hands on the table and leans forward, staring seriously at the both of them. "Look. The old-fashioned way is gonna take too long. I say we summon it."

"Absolutely not," Claire says, as Tamara asks, "Are you out of your bloody mind?"

"Well we can't _find_ it," Ben says, frustrated. "We can't find who it was spying on—if you've got any better ideas I'm listening!"

"If you summon a demon, it's going to possess someone," Claire snaps. "And what if that someone is you?"

"I can't _be_ possessed," Ben says, and waves off her incredulous scoff. "We don't have any proof it was exorcised, which means it's probably already in someone right now! Don't you think we should at least save whoever it got next?"

Tamara gets to her feet. "The demon is gone," she says. "I've spent all day turning this town upside down, and I've come across no more signs of demons _or_ hunters. Now, I may dig a few more days just to be thorough, but we came in on the tail end of this. It's moved on."

"What are you saying?" Ben demands. "We give up?"

"The demon is _gone_ ," Tamara repeats. "Someone else took care of it, and maybe we don't know the whole story, but the people here are safe for now. There's nothing left to hunt."

"This is the closest I've ever gotten to figuring out what happened to Sam and Dean!"

Tamara crosses the room and puts a hand on Ben's shoulder, ducks down a little to meet his eyes. "You need to prepare yourself for the possibility that you may never find out."

Ben jerks away, stung. "You can't just—"

"Listen to me. When my husband and I started hunting, it was because a rawhead killed our daughter." Tamara doesn't flinch saying it, but the words still knock all the fight out of Ben. She continues, "We didn't know what it was or how to fight it. We spent years trying to track it down, hunting every monster we met along the way so no one else would lose their baby like we did." She lets out a sharp sigh. "By the time I finally found the thing, Isaac was dead. And killing that rawhead felt just like any other hunt."

"I'm sorry," Ben says, because he is. "I'm sorry, I am, but this is different. I don't care about revenge, I just want—there's still a chance that Sam and Dean are alive."

"The hunt will take everything you have," Tamara says. "Ben, you're still young. Don't let this consume your whole life."

Ben thinks again about Marie, about the safe normal life waiting for him in Cicero. But if there's one thing he's learned, it's that no life is ever safe—you can lose anyone, at any time, no matter how hard you try to pretend there's nothing there in the dark. So it's better to face it head on, like Dean would. Better to fight your hardest for anything you might be able to keep.

Ben says, "I can't."

Tamara closes her eyes, and for the first time since he's met her, she looks old. "I'm not your mother," she says after a moment. "I can't force you to make the right decision. All I ask is that you think of what Sam and Dean would want for you—what Bobby would want for you. And please, don't do anything reckless." Her hand comes up as though to hold his shoulder again, but she stops before she makes contact. "Sleep on it, yeah? Things always look different in the morning."

"Yeah," Ben mumbles. "Yeah, okay."

He stays silent as Tamara collects her things, doesn't look at Claire in case he sees that awful pity in her eyes again. It isn't long before Tamara is at the door ready to leave. At the last second, she turns back to Ben.

"For what it's worth," Tamara says. "You've got the makings of a great hunter. I hope you find what you're looking for." She takes something out of her pocket and sets it on the table by the door. "Look after yourself, all right?" And then she vanishes into the cold night.

Ben moves toward the door as soon as it closes, certain he knows what she left behind, but behind him Claire says, "Leave it."

He turns. "What?"

"Leave it." Claire stands up and gestures to the demon coin lying inert where Tamara left it. "Tamara's right. We've had a long day, and a few hours won't make any difference. Just leave it until the morning." Her voice isn't angry, not yet, but there's no give to her expression at all. Ben wonders what she would do if he went and picked it up anyway.

"You think the same as her?" he asks quietly. "That it's already too late?"

Claire takes one deliberate step towards him. "I think we should both go to bed."

On a different day, under different circumstances, Ben might have made a joke about that. Now he just keeps his mouth shut and shrugs, turning away to shuck his t-shirt and kick off his jeans. He doesn't look back before crawling under the covers. "Goodnight, Claire."

The words hang in the air for a minute. "Goodnight," Claire says, and a few minutes later, the lights go out.

* * *

But Ben can't sleep; his head and his heart are too full.

He keeps imagining what it would be like to see Sam and Dean again, to bring them home to Marie and Katie and prove he isn't crazy. Maybe then Dean would see he was good enough to hunt. Maybe then Katie and Marie would realize he was right and something terrible _did_ happen. Maybe then leaving them behind won't have been for nothing.

If the demon is still around here, it's a sure bet the thing will have jumped in a new body by now. Can't do much when you're just smoke. So either it's already gone or it's still in someone. And if it's still in someone, if there's a chance, however small...

He doesn't, technically, need Claire or Tamara's help to do it. Ben knows how to draw a devil's trap and he has all those books he and Sam scanned from Bobby's saved to his iPad; one of them is bound to have a summoning ritual in it. He remembers that spells need some sort of essence of the thing you're calling: well, the sulfur all over that house would do the trick for sure, and it's not a long drive back to the house. Maybe it's even better if no one else comes along. After all, there's no chance that demon could jump in _him_ ; Claire and Tamara, as far as he knows, don't have that sort of protection.

 _Sleep first_ , Ben tells himself. Tamara's right, everything looks different when you've had enough rest. But Ben knows himself and he knows all he has ahead of him are more hours of tossing and turning if he can't make his mind be quiet.

Maybe he'll just...drive out to the house. Get the sulfur now while he knows it's still there, just so he has it. Wouldn't want some clean-up crew to come through and take it away, right? Nothing wrong with keeping your options open.

Mind made up, Ben eases his way out of bed and back into his crumpled jeans. He can't find his t-shirt in the dark, but his jacket with the keys in the pocket is by the door, so that'll have to do. After all, he tells himself, he's only going to get some sulfur. He won't be gone long.

Ben steps into his shoes, leaving the laces untied. He slips his jacket on, and, guiltily, glances back to check on Claire.

Who is sitting up and staring right at him.

"Jesus Chr—"

"Where are you going?" Claire asks. She swings her legs over the side of the bed and gets up too.

"Don't you ever sleep?" Ben demands.

"When I can get away with it," says Claire. She turns on the bedside lamp, making Ben wince. "You're leaving to go summon that demon."

"I am _not_ ," Ben splutters, before remembering she can hear a lie. Does it count if he was kind of lying to himself? "I was just gonna get some sulfur from the house! I can use it, to, uh..."

"...summon the demon," Claire finishes for him, unimpressed. "Do you seriously not realize what a stupid idea that is?"

"It's actually not," Ben says. "I can draw a devil's trap, Claire—"

"Because a demon has never broken out of one of those?" Claire crosses her arms. "Demons lie. If it knows what you're looking for, it'll say anything to get you to set it loose."

Ben lets out a sharp laugh. "If you think I'd ever let a demon _out_ of a trap, you're outta your mind."

"Yet I'm not the one summoning it." Claire squints at him. "What if it breaks out and jumps in _you_? What then, hotshot?"

"I told you—" Ben pulls aside the left part of his jacket to reveal his tattoo, refusing to feel weird about not having his shirt on. "I can't be possessed. That's what this baby is for."

Claire stares at the ink sigil for a long moment—long enough to make Ben uncomfortable. He drops the jacket again.

"Look. I'm not gonna stop looking for Sam and Dean. And if I don't follow this lead every way I know how, it's gonna eat at me for years. I know it's dangerous, and I wouldn't ask you to come along, but I need to try. I'm doing this."

Claire purses her lips. "Not without me," she says finally. "I don't trust you not to do something reckless."

Ben tries to keep the rush of gratitude from showing on his face. "You don't have to," he says again.

Claire eyes him a moment. "Maybe I do," she says. Before he can say anything, she adds, "Find your shirt. I'm going to get dressed. Might as well get this over with."

* * *

There's a ramshackle old barn on Stephen Glenn's property that's perfect for the summoning; tucked far away from the road and country-dark, nothing but hay scattered in the corners. They took a high-beam flashlight from the back porch, which Ben sets up on a hook by the door so they can see to work.

Claire's done copying the summoning circle almost before Ben can finish the devil's trap that goes around it, which is entirely unfair. She made him leave all their weapons except holy water in the truck, something Ben agreed to after remembering how easily the demon in his mother plucked up a nearby blade and turned it on itself. They also dumped all the barn's tools—shovels, pitchforks, everything—outside the door. It's the smart choice, but Ben would still feel a lot safer if he had his gun on him.

Once the circles are both finished, Claire stands and braids her hair with a speed that speaks of many years of practice, throwing it over her shoulder to keep it out of the way. "Do you know what you're doing?" Her breath fogs in the air.

"Of course," Ben says without thinking, and sees her wince. "I mean—sorry, mostly. I've never _done_ it, obviously, but I read it before. We just put the sulfur in the middle here..." He dumps out the little ziploc baggy they collected at the house. "And then read the thing. Then, you know, demon." Ben takes his tablet from Claire. The spell's in Latin, naturally, and the letters swap themselves around even more so than usual because he wants so badly to get this right. "Give me a minute."

She clucks her tongue and takes it back from him. "Let me. I'm fluent."

Ben can't decide if he's irritated or grateful. "I thought you didn't want to help."

"If we're doing it we might as well do it right," Claire says. "Stand clear."

Ben stands clear. He's not sure what he was expecting to happen when Claire finally reads the spell—thunder and lightning, the earth splitting open, maybe a burst of hellfire. It's definitely not for Claire's voice to ring out into the silence unanswered.

He knows better than to think her pronunciation was anything less than perfect, but he says anyway, "Try again."

Claire shoots him a look that has his fists clenching. "Ben, I don't think—"

"Please." He won't cry in front of someone he only met a couple of days ago. He _won't_.

Claire reads the spell again, more slowly this time. Nothing.

Ben takes the paper from her. "Maybe you just—" It's pointless. Even if the letters stayed where they were supposed to, the paper blurs in front of him as his throat closes. "Come on," he mutters, then louder, shouting: "Come on! You demonic son of a bitch, where are you!" Ben draws in a shuddery breath. "Where are you?" he asks the empty air, and this time he isn't talking to the demon.

"Ben," Claire says quietly.

Ben jerks away from her so she can't see his face. He was so sure, they'd been so _close_ — "If I'd just gotten here a little sooner," he says, "if I hadn't waited so long to go after them to begin with—"

"Ben," Claire says again, and then there's a hand on his shoulder. Ben starts, looks up, and it makes Claire's grip loosen but she doesn't back off. "Don't give up."

Ben sniffs, still kind of amazed that she's touching him. "What?"

Claire speaks slowly, obviously taking care in her choice of words. "You said nothing would make you stop looking. And nothing Tamara or I said made you any less eager to do this."

"And look where that got me," Ben says. "A big fat dead end."

"You said _nothing_ would make you stop looking," Claire repeats, eyes staring straight into his. "Did you mean it?"

Ben draws himself up, and her hand drops from his shoulder. "Of course."

"Then don't let this slow you down," Claire says. "We'll keep looking until we find them."

"We? You want to come with me?" Not that he isn't glad, but he just blew his big chance here. " _Why?_ "

Claire crosses her arms. "I don't have anywhere else to be. You at least know which direction you're going." It sounds a little sadder when she says it this time, like maybe—unlike Ben—she couldn't go back home even if she wanted to. "And you aren't completely intolerable."

Ben laughs thickly. "Oh, thanks." He scuffs at the edge of the summoning circle with one foot. "What if I never find him?" he whispers, avoiding Claire's eyes. "What if Tamara's right, and I spend years and years looking for them and I never find out what happened?"

Claire's silent for a while, and when he looks up he sees a frown has settled on her face. She's not just giving platitudes; she's actually thinking about it. "You won't ever stop wondering," she says finally. "It will always hurt. But you can try to help somebody else, and that might make up for some of it."

"I think that's the most hunter-y thing you've ever said." Ben lets out a quick breath and then extends his hand. "That's what we'll do, then. Sticking together, helping people. Shake on it."

Claire quirks an eyebrow, but she humors him. "Deal."

And finally, he isn't looking on his own.


	3. December

As the air turns colder, Ben and Claire stumble across a pack of skinwalkers posing as stray dogs in Kentucky. Their hunting ground has been converted to a Christmas tree farm for the holidays, and Ben—already sick of carols and painfully missing his mother's latkes—can't deny the certain joy it brings him to pump the things full of silver while a creepy blow-up Santa looks on. He's feeling quite proud of himself until Claire walks back from her dead mutt bleeding from both arms.

"What the hell were you thinking?" he demands, scrambling for gauze. He sounds like Dean. "Never get in close quarters with a skinwalker! Did it bite you?"

"I'm fine," Claire says, eyeing the scattered remains of those Ben killed. "Just scratches."

"Yeah, well, test them anyway. Do you have silver?" Claire holds up her knife, but it's covered in skinwalker blood; Ben offers his own clean blade instead. "If the cuts burn when you touch them—"

"I'm not infected." Claire presses the flat of the knife against her bloody arm, and indeed, nothing happens. At Ben's squint, she rolls her eyes and touches the other arm as well. "Satisfied?"

Begrudgingly, Ben hands her a bandage—by now he's learned not to try dressing her wounds for her. "You still shouldn't have got in its face like that. We could have picked them all off from a distance, easy, and then we'd be back at the motel eating pizza by now."

Claire's jaw works, wrapping the gauze around her arm. "I can't shoot."

Ben stills. "What do you mean, you can't shoot?"

"I don't like guns." Claire gives the bandage a vicious yank. "So I never learned how to use them."

"But that's—" Ben thinks of the shtriga, the gaping mouth pulling the life from Claire's body, the dagger she'd tried to kill it with. "How are you still alive?"

"I can take care of myself," Claire snaps, but Ben just shakes his head.

"First thing in the morning, I'm teaching you. You can't be a hunter and not know how to use a gun."

Her frosty gaze settles upon him. "I told you, I don't like guns. When you shoot someone, it's not just the monster that gets hurt."

She said something similar to Tamara, talking about that demon. But Ben knows, intimate as blood on his hands, that bullets aren't the only weapon that can kill a host.

"I get that," he says roughly. "Trust me, I do. But if it's us or them, you gotta keep yourself safe, okay? Think what would've happened if one of these things turned you."

Claire sneers down at the dead skinwalker but doesn't reply. They'll have to burn these bodies soon, and Ben never wants that to be Claire.

"Look," he says. "A weapon is only as good or bad as what you use it for. I'm not saying you have to like guns, but you shouldn't be too scared to use one, either."

She gives him a look that says she knows exactly what he's doing and doesn't like it. Still, after a beat, she relents: "Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," Ben agrees, his newfound worry already easing. "Tonight, let's burn these suckers."

* * *

Morning dawns cold but sunny, and Ben finds them a nice abandoned country road where the rolling mountains hide them from view. They start with pistols, sitting the back of the truck bed while Ben shows Claire how to load, unload, use the safety. Guns hadn't scared Ben so much after he knew how they worked, and he can see Claire easing into it too, the way she goes from touching the gun as little as possible to loading and unloading it as quick and efficient as she does everything else. It's a much gentler introduction than the shotgun Dean shoved in his arms while his mom bled out on the warehouse floor—but he's not thinking of that. This is for Claire.

Still, once she's got the hang of the magazine, Ben has to be the one to suggest actual target practice. He snagged some paper plates and clothespins from the last dollar store they stopped at, so he sets up a few targets on the bare branches of a scraggly tree several yards back from the road.

"All right," Ben says, lifting a pistol of his own. "You do what I do, okay? Feet apart, about the width of your shoulders—yeah, that's perfect. Okay, lock your arms, like this, straight out—"

"This isn't very practical," Claire says, but her stance mimics his exactly.

"This is how beginners practice," Ben says. "Aim down the barrel, squeeze nice and easy, and—" He hits the plate dead center. Even Dean couldn't have done it better. "See? Now you try."

Claire holds up her gun. Takes a deep breath. Waits.

"Claire?"

"Be quiet," she snaps. It's a long time before she finally fires, and though she doesn't stumble, her shot goes wide in a spray of splinters from the next tree over. She curses and shoots again. Her next bullet disappears into the woods.

"Okay," Ben says, as she's about to pull the trigger a third time. "Look, maybe you're right about the stance, try it like this—" He moves his own body to show her, twisting right and left, bending his knees. "Just watch for the recoil. You want to absorb it as much as you can, but if you go too loose you'll fall over. Dig your feet in a little."

She shifts her feet and slouches, but her shoulders are still pulled tight to her neck. She shoots again, twice, and misses both times. "Maybe I should stick to knives."

"Loosen up your shoulders," says Ben, but Claire doesn't seem to have _loose_ anywhere in her vocabulary. "And tuck your elbows in." She mimics him perfectly right until she takes aim, and then all her muscles tighten up again. Before Ben can correct her, she's let off two more shots. The first one actually grazes the side of the plate, but the second one whizzes off nowhere near it, lost among dead leaves. Claire shifts the gun from hand to hand, trying to pretend her arms don't hurt.

Ben moves towards her, hands up in surrender. "Can I show you?"

Claire assesses him for a moment, then gives a tiny nod, her sigh clouding up in the cold.

"You gotta bring your elbow in," Ben says again, quieter this time. His own hands are nearly numb, but he's still not expecting to feel the heat of her skin before he even touches her, bared to the chill of the late winter morning. He draws back, worried. "Are you sick? You feel like you've got a fever."

Claire is stiff, like she's bracing for a blow. "I'm always like this."

"Is it—" Ben starts, then remembers to close his mouth. "Okay," he says instead. "Okay. Keep your gun up, but just let your shoulders—drop."

It might be the first time she's ever let him touch her in a non-combat situation. Her skin is burning hot against his fingertips, muscles beneath bunched up and tense. She lets herself be moved, but she doesn't like it. Ben tries very hard not to think about how good she smells.

"Fire on the exhale," Ben offers. "Ready?"

He feels it as Claire breathes in and out, and this time when she fires, her bullet finally hits the plate. There's a fierce grin on her face when she pulls away, taking all her heat with her, and Ben feels something dangerous wobble under his ribs.

"Good." He lets his hands drop. "Now let's see you do it again."

* * *

This year, the first day of Hanukkah is on Christmas Eve. Ben and Claire haven't celebrated either one.

They're in some little Wyoming town tonight, fighting off flurries, searching for a motel that still has vacancies. Ben passes colored Christmas lights on rooftops, trees in windows, even one menorah, and suddenly he is unbearably homesick. He misses Sam and Dean so much it hurts, he misses his aunt Marie and Katie, he misses...

But he's not alone, not completely. Ben spots a two-story motel with a sad-looking plastic Christmas tree by the sign, and just as he's pulling into the parking lot, his phone rings.

"Can you go get us a room?" he asks Claire, pulling the phone from his pocket. "Might be Tamara or somebody, I'd better...stay…"

He stares at the number, certain his phone is lying to him. It buzzes again in his hand.

"You okay?" says Claire.

"I'm—" Ben fumbles, silently begging her not to ask any more questions. The phone rings a third time. "I gotta take this."

Claire nods. Then, thank God, she gets out of the truck and leaves him to it. Ben slams his thumb on accept call.

"Katie?"

For a moment the other end of the line is silent, like Katie can't figure out what to say either. Then, quietly: "Hello."

The last time he heard Katie's voice, they'd both been screaming at each other. It wasn't like Ben and Katie never argued—any best-friend-turned-adoptive-sister would have been the same—but their last fight was different. That fight was Ben, desperate for any evidence he could give his aunt that monsters really did exist, and Katie, who'd seen changelings with her own two eyes, refusing to tell Marie a word of it. _Fine!_ Ben had yelled, just before he slammed the door to her bedroom and stalked back to his own. _You're not gonna tell the truth? Then I don't see why I should ever talk to you again!_

The very next night, he'd driven to South Dakota in the pouring rain and found a dead body. He was certain Katie was back home hating him this whole time.

"Hey," Ben chokes, gripping his phone tight. "Hey, Katie, shit—how are you? How did you get this _number_?"

"You drunk dialed me on your birthday," she reminds him. "Left a long voicemail. You don't remember?"

Ben remembers thinking really hard about it, but not that he actually did it, which says something for what a crappy, lonely birthday it'd been. He doesn't normally get Dean levels of hammered. "Shit. I'm sorry."

"Well." Katie clears her throat. "Are you still mad at me?"

And Katie's no psychic, but after growing up at Ben's side, she can hear a lie as well as Claire could. "A little," he admits. "But I know why you did it, and I miss you so I don't care anymore." He hesitates. "Are you still mad at me?"

"Super mad," she says, and laughs again. She's definitely crying a little. "But I don't care either."

"Are you okay?" Ben asks. "Is—is Marie okay?"

Katie's quiet for a long time. "We're okay," she finally says. "I moved out—I guess you didn't know that. Decided to take a gap year before college. Halfway through my road trip I ended up at this place in Colorado, and I met. You know. A girl."

"A girl, huh?" Ben asks, with a shaky smile. "Like a girl-girl?"

"Shut up," says Katie. "It's only been a couple months, okay? But I like it here. I think I might—I think I might stay for a while." She sniffs. "But it's Hanukkah and no one here's any good at making latkes."

Ben wipes his face on his sleeve. His latkes are barely passable, but that never stopped Katie. "I bet Marie can fix you up."

"Marie's not there," Katie says. Ben almost has a heart attack before Katie continues, "You remember that lady she works with, who makes the really bad cat-hair fruitcake? She knows Marie's been having a rough time, so she invited her to go on a cruise somewhere warm. I had to talk her into accepting. She wanted to stay home and watch the door."

Ben winces. "Sorry," he says. "Tell her—tell her I'm sorry."

"Tell her yourself," Katie snaps. "I told you, I'm not gonna be the go-between for you guys. I won't tell her I have your number, or that I'm inviting you to spend Hanukkah with me, but if she asks me about you I'm not going to lie to her, either."

"...you're inviting me to spend Hanukkah with you?" Ben asks.

Katie grumbles unintelligibly. "I miss you too, you know," she says. "You're being a huge asshole, but you're still my best friend, and we're never gonna fix things by not talking to each other. So...yeah, if you can, you should come."

Ben takes a moment to wipe his eyes and sniffle as quietly as possible, hoping Katie won't hear it over the phone. "I think I can do that," he says finally. Then he remembers Claire, waiting for him in some shitty motel room right now, so alone in the world that Ben was her best option. He wonders if she's ever tried latkes. "Hey, is it okay if I bring a plus one?"

"Dude," says Katie, and then comes the gleeful cackle Ben has heard every single time he started dating someone. "You met someone too?"

"Not like that!" Katie's going to be insufferable once she sees Claire, Ben can already tell, but he can't stop smiling anyway. "She's just a friend. We're riding together."

"Ben, you sly dog," she snickers. "You've only been gone seven months."

"Long enough," Ben says. He's missed her so much.

"Yeah, well." Katie clears her throat. "How about you tell me about it in person, huh?"

Ben grips the keys to his truck, heart lighter than it's been in weeks. "Deal."

* * *

Claire accepts their new destination willingly enough, though Ben's puffy red eyes when he told her he wanted to go to Colorado might have had some role in convincing her. After the seven hours it takes to get to Boulder, though, Ben still doesn't realize that Katie gave him the address for a dive bar until they get there.

"The Salt Round," he reads, squinting through the light snowfall that found them an hour back. It's halfway up a mountain, pretty far away from any other nightlife, and the building looks kind of like it used to be a barn. He cuts the truck's engine. "Is this a joke? Is she getting revenge on me?" He opens the driver's door and jumps out, shivering a little. Should have put on a heavier jacket.

"Revenge for what?" Claire asks, following him out of the truck. She's not wearing a jacket—Ben isn't sure she even _has_ one—but the cold never seems to bother her.

Ben didn't tell Claire that much about Katie, all things considered. He explained that Katie is like a sister to him, that they've been best friends since they were kids, but he didn't go into the whole messy story of Katie's mom going nuts and Marie adopting her and Ben suddenly having an actual sister living in his house. He didn't tell Claire that Katie's one of the people he left behind when he started hunting, either. Some things are best not to bring up.

"Katie doesn't like hunting," Ben says at last. "Salt rounds, those are what Dean loads his shotgun with to pop ghosts. If she's trying to make some weird point about the futility of my quest or whatever..."

But the sign says they're open, and even though it's technically Christmas the place is bustling with life. "Come on," he says to Claire, and pushes the door open.

The bar is warmly lit and spacious enough for its many patrons, who alternately gather around a pool table in the center of the room or the well-stocked bar in the back. Above, a balcony with more tables borders three sides of the larger main room, haphazardly strung with lights and tinsel. The jukebox next to the door is playing music at top volume—not carols, but AC/DC. There's someone at almost every table, talking or playing cards or—Ben does a double-take. Sharpening a machete?

"Doesn't like hunting, huh?" Claire says, nodding upwards. Ben follows her line of sight to see a the dark lines of a devil's trap painted on the ceiling.

"No fucking way," he says aloud.

He only gets about five seconds to process it before Katie appears at the top of the stairs, hair pulled back and wearing a greasy apron. She mouths his name, then thunders down the stairs and a moment later Ben's ribs are being crushed.

"Hey," she says, laughing, and Ben squeezes her back, a little shocked to find he's missed her even more than he knew. No one's hugged him since he left home.

"What the hell," Ben says. "Katie, what are you _doing_ here?"

"I work here!" she says. She pulls back, hands still on his shoulders, grinning wide. "I knew you'd be surprised. Oh, God, you should see your stupid face."

Ben is certain whatever expression he's making right now is extremely stupid, but he's spared from having to comment when Katie catches sight of Claire.

"New girl!" she says, and starts towards her, then pauses, taking in Claire's crossed arms and dubious expression. "Not a hugger?"

"No," Claire answers. She hesitates herself and then sticks out her hand. "Claire Novak."

She's being a lot more polite to Katie than she was to Ben. He realizes this is the first time he's ever heard her last name.

"Katie Doolittle," Katie says. The current song on the jukebox comes to an end, and Katie perks up. "Hold on a sec." She fishes some change out of her pocket and punches in a code she seems to know by heart, and a moment later they're being blasted by the sugary pop beats of _We R Who We R_.

A handsome grey-haired man sticks his head out of the kitchen door near the back of the room, eyes narrowed until they land on Katie. "Seriously?" he shouts.

" _Yes_ ," Katie shouts back. "Is your masculinity so fragile that you can't listen to anything but classic rock? Ke$ha is a superstar!"

"Glitter will _not_ be tolerated in this establishment," the guy says to the bar at large, and huffs back into the kitchen. Several of them chuckle. Ben gets the feeling this kind of thing happens often.

"Tommy's a killjoy," Katie says, rolling her eyes. "He's my boss."

"You talk to your boss like that?" Claire sounds impressed.

"We're more like family around here," Katie replies, flippant. "His sister is the real hardass. Besides, my shift just ended and it's Christmas. Come on upstairs, you guys must be beat."

"What are you _doing_ here?" Ben asks again, looking around in awe as he climbs the staircase. There are wards everywhere, framed like art or carved into the walls, and some of the Christmas decorations are in fact tiny salt rounds. It's like if someone took Bobby's panic room and made it fun to be in. "You _hate_ all of this."

"People change," Katie says, deliberately mysterious. "Remember that girl I was talking about? Turned out she's a witch. And you should have seen _my_ stupid face when I found out."

* * *

Emily Jorgeson looks way more normal than Ben ever pictured a witch would. She's short and curvy with a kind face, hair a darker blonde than Claire, and she's wearing a Santa hat with a mechanical pencil stuck behind her ear. Katie pecks her on the cheek as they invade this small office, a quick but genuine smile passing between them. "Hey, babe."

"You brought friends!" Emily says, getting to her feet. "You're Ben, right? Katie talks about you all the time."

"I'm at least ten times cooler than she says I am," Ben replies, giving her a warm handshake. "Maybe eleven."

"Ten times zero is still zero," says Katie, and Ben aims a kick at her shins.

After the introductions are through, Emily leads them out to one of the tables on the balcony, where they can have a little privacy from the hubbub downstairs but still eat burgers at the same time. Katie mentions that most of Emily's witchcraft involves identifying magic, and in a burst of inspiration Ben shows her the spy-coin they found in Nebraska, hoping she can trace it.

"I'm not sure I'd have much luck, if the other end was destroyed," Emily admits. "But I can ask around my coven, see if I can at least get the name of the demon who planted it."

The mention of her coven has Katie prompting her for anecdotes, about a protection charm gone wrong or a curse spread by kissing. Katie chimes in with her own commentary that speaks to having heard them many times, resting her hand over Emily's, and Emily turns hers palm-up and squeezes without missing a beat.

She's comfortable here, he realizes. It's not like Katie has ever had any problem with PDA, but it's usually more an act of defiance than something she does just because she wants to. This is a different Katie than the one Ben grew up with: more open, less angry. He wasn't around to help make it happen, wasn't even around to watch. This Katie doesn't even flinch when she talks about the things their customers hunt, and Ben missed everything that might have changed her mind.

All that matters is she's happy, he tries to tell himself, but he suddenly wishes he'd never come at all.

"How did you find this place, anyways?" he asks after the next lull in conversation. "You gotta admit, it's not exactly your style."

Katie ducks her head, silent acknowledgement of the conversation they're going to have about this later. "You know, funny enough, it was this ugly thing," she says, and from the front of her shirt fishes out a necklace she'd been wearing underneath.

Ben's jaw drops. It's an anti-possession charm, one of the two he brought back from his first summer at Bobby's, his promise to both Katie and Marie that they would never end up like Ben's mom did. He stares at the small silver pendant, overwhelmed. She kept it, even after that awful fight they had, those terrible things they said to each other?

Katie lets the necklace fall back against her chest. "Em saw it on me and she was like, 'Whoa, you know about monsters and shit? Because I'm totally a badass witch.'"

"That's not how I said it," Emily puts in, but Katie shushes her.

"That is how I heard it with my heart. You are a badass. So I told her my little brother made it for me—"

" _Little brother_ ," Ben sputters, offended by half that title and touched by the other.

"And she told me she knew some more people who cared about warding off demons, and then she hooked me up with waitressing here," Katie says. "After I..." She glances over at Emily, obviously omitting some details. "...pulled my head out of my ass about some preconceived notions, it's been rainbows ever since. I'm applying to CU Boulder next semester."

"Her aunt's really proud of her," Emily adds. "I met her kind of on accident last time they Skyped, but that just gave me the chance to brag about my awesome girlfriend."

Ben stands almost before he realizes he's done it, chair scraping backwards over the wood. He can see by Katie's grimace that she knows what upset him, but he's not going to make a big deal about it in front of Claire; he just needs to be somewhere else right now. "Bathroom," he calls over his shoulder, heading for the stairs.

It's a relief to be able to close a door between him and the noise of the bar. He locks it and leans against the sink, head bowed. Katie has always been warm with her adoptive family; it's hardly the first time she's called Ben her brother, or Marie her aunt. Normally it gives Ben a warm glow of pride. Now it feels like he's been doused with cold water.

He begged Katie, _begged_ her to tell Marie he wasn't crazy, and she stayed silent. Wouldn't go to Bobby's with Ben, didn't care about what he did or learned there, only tolerated Dean at a cool distance when she had to, because she hated the supernatural and anything that reminded her of it. And granted: monsters killed her dad and drove her mom insane. Katie's aversion was understandable, and all those years Ben had tried to _be_ understanding, even though it killed him not to be able to talk about monsters with the one person who'd get it.

But now Katie is not only dating a witch, she's introducing her new supernatural girlfriend to Marie. _Her_ aunt, _her_ nice normal not-lonely life that somehow finally includes the whole world of things she hated, only after Ben stopped being around to see it. The life Ben was forced to leave behind because _she_ wouldn't stand up for him when it really counted.

Ben looks up and studies his reflection a moment. His eyes are bright and suspiciously red-rimmed. "Get it together," he mumbles, and scrubs at his hair. It's a long time before he opens the door, but when he does Katie is waiting for him.

"Outside," she says immediately, and takes Ben's arm.

"What," Ben says, even as she leads him to the entrance and down the front stairs. Ben didn't bring his coat, but after the hot heavy air of the bar he's glad for the shock of cold.

Katie stops them by the corner of the building. "I'm sorry," she says presently. She has her hands shoved in her pockets and she won't look at him. "I should have told Marie the truth when you asked me to. I know."

"Katie—"

"No, listen." She sighs, a visible cloud in the cold air. "You said you understood why I didn't say anything, but you don't. I didn't do it because I was mad at you, or even because I hate monsters. I just—it's just that—" Katie swallows, blinking hard. She doesn't normally stammer like this. "We didn't have any proof," she says finally, voice small. "And I didn't want Marie to look at me like my mom did. Like she didn't know me anymore, or like I wasn't myself—like she couldn't love me. She was my family. You were both my family."

Ben's throat is tight. "You're still my family, Katie."

Katie nods fiercely, eyes wet. "Back then I was angry you'd even ask me to talk about that. But then I met Emily, and found this place, and I finally felt like I belonged. The same way you and Marie made me feel. And I realized you didn't have that anymore, you were alone, because I didn't..." She sniffs. "I just couldn't find the words."

"Oh, Katie," Ben says thickly, and hugs her to him. It shouldn't surprise him, really; they've always been too much alike. When it came to the reason she lost her parents, of course Katie would be speechless too.

"Do you understand now?" Katie says into his shoulder. "I wanted you to come see me because it wasn't fair that I had all this and you didn't. I'm so sorry, Ben. I'm sorry you felt like you had to do it on your own, I'm sorry I don't know how to tell her."

"It's okay," Ben sniffs, clumsily patting her hair, and for the first time he really means it. "It's okay. I mean, you kept my ugly necklace, didn't you?"

Katie laughs wetly. "I did! And I'll take Emily out there if you want, I really will." She finally pulls back, drawing her forearm her eyes. "She can light something on fire with magic. Marie'll _have_ to believe us."

Ben laughs, trying to imagine his poor aunt laying eyes on someone who could burn her house down with nothing but a thought. "Maybe someday," he says, though he's touched by the offer. "Now that I'm out here...I don't want to go home until I find out what happened to Dean and Sam. Please understand."

Katie looks resigned. "I was afraid you'd say that." But she doesn't fight him on it, not now. "God. Do I look like I've been crying?"

"Yes," Ben says. "Me?"

"Awful," Katie informs him, and they laugh.

* * *

He stays up with Katie far past closing time, late enough that Haley, the bar's owner, offers them use of one of the guest bedrooms. Claire balks at first, but Ben points out that finding a hotel this time of night is an exercise in misery—and after all, where could be safer than a place with a devil's trap over the front door?

He wakes late in the morning to a hum of activity already beginning in the bar. Ben snoops down to the kitchen and finds Tommy, who whips him up a plate of toast and eggs.

"Your friend got up early," he says, bustling to the fridge and back. "Like, really early. I don't know what she and my sister talked about, but she's been outside most of the day."

Tommy offers more toast when Ben finishes, but it's clear he's already started work for the day and Ben doesn't want to be a nuisance. Katie went home with Emily, so he's not expecting her back anytime soon. With no better plan, Ben bundles up and goes outside to look for Claire.

The exterior of the Salt Round is pretty impressive, now he has the chance to see it in daylight. The average civilian would think it's just decorated with some funky tribal murals, but Ben can see protection sigils from half a dozen cultures woven into the design. He sees plenty of wards against demons, but most prominent are the Anasazi symbols carved over every window and door, the ones meant to keep a wendigo at bay.

Ben looks up the cold, snowy mountain rising above the bar, and shivers.

There's a fire escape on the side of the building that leads up to the roof, and its ladder is extended all the way to the ground. Ben squints up at it, breath fogging in the cold. "Hello?"

He doesn't hear an answer, but it's windy and echo-y out here, so he climbs up just in case.

The view is spectacular. Once he clears the line of trees protecting the parking lot, there's a whole mountain range extending in both directions, glittering with snow. The winding road carves a path down the rock and below him lies the entire river plain studded with cities. Ben is so busy admiring it that he nearly slips on something slick and red on the wooden tiles. "Oh, shit, what?"

"It's paint." Claire sits at the end of the roof, face and clothes smudged in that same bright red. It's very unsettling. "Be careful where you walk."

Ben gingerly picks his way toward her. "Good morning to you too. What is all this?"

"Warding," she says.

He squints at the strange curving letters, interrupted by sharp lines. "For what?"

She's silent a moment, working with a small paintbrush to round out some symbol that looks naggingly familiar. Finally she says, "Haley was letting us stay for free. She obviously wants to protect this place. We're trading."

Alphabets are not Ben's forte, but he turns his head at a different angle and tries to read them anyway. "I swear I know this. What's it warding against?"

Claire doesn't answer.

"Ooookay." Ben wants to offer to help her, but he has enough trouble with English, let alone whatever the hell this is. "Want some company?" he asks instead.

"You'd just step in it again," Claire says sharply. She catches the hurt on Ben's face before he can wipe it away and sighs. "Sorry. I'm not going to be good company while I do this, and it'll go quicker if I don't speak English while I do it. Just go spend time with Katie or something, okay? That's why we're here to begin with."

Well. Can't argue with that. "If you're sure," Ben says.

"Leave," Claire tells him, and so he does.

Katie arrives shortly after lunch, luxuriating in being at work without actually having to _do_ work, and she and Ben kick the shit out of each other on the old Nintendo in the basement. She gives him a full tour of the place, pointing out the different levels of protection and even a secret passage from the basement that leads outside in case of an emergency. But when the sun starts to set and Ben still hasn't seen Claire come in, he starts to get worried. She should have at least stopped for a break by now.

It turns out Emily had the same concern, because she's out in the snow holding a bag of chips like she's trying to coax an animal toward her. Claire is perched on the railing of the back staircase, painting something small and intricate on the lintel of the door. "Just a five minute break," Emily calls. "Please? Haley said you haven't eaten all day!"

"Oh boy," Ben mutters, remembering what Claire said about not wanting to speak English while she was working. Claire's the most stubborn person he's ever met after Dean, and Emily clearly hasn't realized that she isn't stopping until she's completely finished, whether that takes one more hour or ten.

"No thank you," Claire says shortly. "I need to finish before the light fades."

"You can work on it tomorrow," Emily wheedles. Ben puts a gloved hand on her arm.

"Let me talk to her."

Claire doesn't look down at him when he tromps over. "I'm not hungry." There's a smear of paint next to her mouth, like she already ate and it was something bloody. He still doesn't understand how she's not shivering.

"That's okay." Ben nods west toward the setting sun. "Want me to hold a flashlight so you can finish?"

At that she does pause, just a little, enough to search Ben's face. Slowly, she nods.

"Okay," says Ben, and brings her a light.

He doesn't speak the rest of the evening, even when Katie comes to bring him a hot chocolate to keep his hands warm. When Claire finishes marking the entrances, they move inside, where she switches the paint for permanent marker and scrawls much more quickly along the baseboards, long sentences that mean nothing to Ben but look as natural to her as breathing. She doesn't really need his flashlight anymore, but she doesn't tell him to go away, either. He follows her down every hallway Katie had showed him earlier that day, and when he silently offers her his cup, she takes a sip and then keeps working.

He's leaned against the cold cinderblocks of the basement and trying to keep his eyes open when Claire says, "I never want to do that again."

Ben jerks. "Huh?"

"I said I—" Claire actually looks at him and sighs. "You didn't have to stay up with me."

 _Wasn't tired_ , Ben almost jokes, before he realizes it would just come off as a lie. "I wanted to," he says instead. "You didn't have to do it all in one day."

"I wanted to get it over with," Claire says. She looks exhausted.

Ben pushes himself upright, examining her latest handiwork. "Do you mind my asking why?"

Claire's quiet for a moment. Then she says, "This is a safe place. It's—inspirational, I guess, to try and build this community." She shrugs. "I knew a way to make it safer. And I really don't like debts."

"Well, whatever monster speaks that language, they're gonna have a hell of a time getting in now." Ben clumsily scoops up his empty cup and heads for the stairs. "You coming?"

"The monster that destroyed my family," Claire says carefully, and Ben stops cold. "It was an angel."

He takes a step back towards her. "You know about angels?"

"Yes, I do. The one monster hunters don't believe in." Her laugh is low and unpleasant. "Everyone in my family is gone, thanks to a holy warrior of God."

Dean always warned him that angels were no better than demons—worse, even, because people believed they were good. Ben tries to imagine the complete and total desolation he felt when his mother died except _everyone,_ Marie and Katie and Dean, and then to know that this was supposedly okay with God. He can't. He doesn't know how anybody could hurt that much and still keep breathing. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't," Claire says, tired. "I don't want—I had to tell Haley so she would know what I was writing all over her bar, and it didn't feel right to tell a stranger and not you. So."

"Thank you," he says, trying to put into his voice that he knows it isn't easy, that he knows she's trusting him.

"This—" Claire gestures around the room, at all the script she laid down. "It's Enochian. I have this warding on my body, too. So angels can't see me." She brushes her hands off and looks him in the eye. "And I don't ever want to talk about any of this. We clear?"

"Sure," Ben says, thrown. On her body? Like a tattoo? "No more questions. Got it."

It isn't until later, when they're heading to bed, that he sees what she meant. Claire's wearing shorts to sleep for the first time since he's known her, and he catches sight of raised white marks on the front of her thighs in those same Enochian letters. Not a tattoo—scars. He turns away, swallowing hard.

He isn't allowed to ask. He doesn't know if he could bring himself to even if he was. But there's no question she did that to herself. Whatever that angel did to her family, she never, ever wants it to happen again.

* * *

On the final day of 2016—which is also the last day of Hanukkah—Ben summons Claire and, with great fanfare, tells her she is now allowed to drive his truck some of the time. "Consider it your Hanukkah gift," he says, handing her the keys. "Sorry we ate all the gelt."

"How generous of you," Claire replies dryly. "I get the sneaking suspicion you just don't want to get off the Nintendo long enough to go buy fireworks."

Ben grins, caught out. "That," he admits, as there's no point in lying, " _and_ you're one of the few people I trust not to drive it off a bridge. You should feel honored."

She stares at him a moment, looking startled, and then she lets out an actual giggle. She quickly smacks a hand over her mouth, but it doesn't help: soon she's bent over in full-blown laughter.

"What?" Ben demands, torn between feeling offended and awed. He's got to know what he did to make her smile like that so he can do it again.

"Oh, Ben," she says. "I _am_ honored. Thank you." She never does explain what was so funny, though, just takes the keys and heads outside, still snickering.

After Claire gets back, they spend the rest of the evening with everyone else, swaddled in blankets on the roof of the Salt Round, eating chicken wings and shooting bottle rockets into the dark. It makes him miss Sam and Dean: last year they lit up an entire milk crate of explosives in Bobby's yard, and parts of that fire didn't burn out for a good half hour. But he's got Katie here with him now, and Claire, along with Emily in her silly 2017 glasses and Haley and Tommy bickering like the siblings they are. There are even more people inside, hunters, people like Ben who know how bad the world can be and have decided to fight it. It's not a the worst way to say goodbye to a year so full of loss.

"So," Katie asks, as midnight approaches. "Got any resolutions?"

Ben thinks about last New Year's, and coming home to her in Cicero. "Just one."

And a few days later, as they finally leave town, Ben buys the one Jewish postcard he can find in the store and a large packet of stamps. He has no return address, so this will be a one-way kind of communication, but it's a start. They're never gonna fix it by not talking to each other. He knows too well what it feels like for someone to just disappear.

 _Dear Marie_ , he writes.


	4. January

Lawrence, Kansas is like any dozen other midwestern towns Ben's visited in this line of work: quiet, flat, and windy as hell. Snow covers the neat square blocks as they pass through the town, every other house sporting flags for the local college football team. It's not too different from Cicero, and utterly unremarkable except for the one fact that brought them here: this is Sam and Dean's home town. This is where they put an end to the apocalypse.

Mostly what Ben knows about the almost-end times is what he saw on the news: natural disasters raging across the continent with unprecedented ferocity, ordinary people suddenly turning on their loved ones in gruesome ways before vanishing from the earth. It was only after Dean appeared on their doorstep that Ben learned of the battle between Heaven and Hell that only ended when Sam sacrificed himself to save the world. 

But a year after that, Sam escaped Lucifer's clutches and found Dean—how, Ben never learned. "People aren't supposed to come back from the dead," Dean said the one time Ben asked. Sam was seated in the corner, catatonic except for his fingers furiously scratching the wallpaper; Ben never did see him wake up without screaming. "Trust me, nothing good ever comes from it. The less you know the better."

It took a year for Sam to get back from the Pit. Ben's been waiting ten months. Maybe, in Lawrence, he'll find some answers. 

Near the outskirts of town there's a graveyard called Stull Cemetery. According to the internet, somewhere among those tombstones is a portal to Hell itself. "I just want to look," Ben says quickly, seeing Claire's expression when he suggests it. "We won't open it or touch it or anything. I just want to know if they came here before they disappeared."

Claire's mouth tightens. "What are you expecting to find, the Impala's tire tracks?"

"I won't know until I see, will I?" Ben puts the truck in park but doesn't move, waiting for her approval. "I promise I'm not gonna do anything stupid."

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Ben," says Claire, but at last she sighs and opens the door of the truck. 

A tall iron fence encloses the cemetery grounds, higher than Ben's head, and the wrought gates are chained shut under a large sign that reads KEEP OUT. The whole place feels overgrown, even despite the leafless branches; in summer the vines and trees would probably obscure the view of the headstones entirely. Ben feels sort of bad for the people buried here: first their gravesite opens into a flaming hellgate, and now they can't even have visitors. He digs a paperclip out of his pocket, intending to pick the padlock, but to his dismay it's the kind that takes a combination instead of a key. 

"Shit," he says, yanking it uselessly. "Do you know how to break these things?"

"No," says Claire, eyes distant as she stares beyond the gate. Ben tries 1-2-3-4, which is not the passcode. Claire walks slowly to the left and comes to a stop about ten feet away. "I do know how to break and enter, though." And she takes a running jump up into a willow tree planted too close to the fence. 

"Whoa," says Ben, abandoning the lock to follow her. "You're just gonna—what?"

"Do what I do," Claire says, pulling herself up among the bare branches. She starts to climb out along a limb that looks entirely too thin for Ben's liking, one that extends up and over the cemetery fence. "If you're going to fall, just make sure it's on the right side." With that, she drops to the ground inside Stull. 

"God you're cool," Ben's mouth says without his permission. He clears his throat. "Okay, I haven't climbed a tree in like, years, so..."

"I can turn around if you prefer," says Claire. She doesn't, though, watching him with poorly hidden amusement. 

Ben grumbles and surveys the tree. There's a rough sort of crevice up the trunk that he can use as a foothold, and his arms are not so short that he can't reach that branch Claire used. He leaps, scrambles madly for several seconds, and manages not to fall on his ass. The bark scrapes his hands as he finds safer footing. 

"You know, most places it's just some chainlink and a no trespassing sign," he huffs, swinging one leg around. "None of this high security shit."

"Be careful," says Claire. 

"I got it." Ben scoots closer to her, feeling the limb start to bow the further he is from the trunk. It's very lucky he isn't afraid of heights. He makes it over the iron spikes atop the fence, close enough he could kick them if he wanted to, and then he hears the dull creak of wood starting to snap. 

"Shit shit _shitshitshit—_ " Ben, with horrible images of his body being impaled, lets go of the branch and jumps as far forward into the graveyard as he can manage. A twig whips into his face as the branch snaps upward without him. His feet jar into the ground and he braces himself for a faceplant when he discovers, to his infinite surprise, that Claire has caught him. 

"Hi," he says, bloodstream whizzing with adrenaline. Her arms are under his elbows and for one wild second he thinks that if he tried to kiss her, she'd let him. 

As though hearing the thought, Claire pushes him upright and turns starkly aside, amusement gone. "Let's get this over with," she says, shoulders stiff. 

"Right. Uh, thanks." Ben brushes off the dirt he didn't fall in and looks around. "I think it's...this way?"

In truth he has no idea, and the gravestones themselves are no help, all more or less equal size without any adornments that scream "hellgate." There aren't even any mausoleums to break into. But it turns out they don't need Ben's terrible sense of direction, because as soon as they cross some invisible line in the grass, Claire cries out and clutches her head. 

"Whoa, you okay?" Ben puts his hand on Claire's shoulder, only intending to brace her up like she did for him, but she lashes away and takes a few steps back. 

"We shouldn't be here," she hisses. "You asked if I could sense evil? This is it."

"What about Sam and Dean?" Ben asks, heart pounding. He can't feel anything different from where he's standing, but Claire would never react like that if it wasn't real; he might finally have a chance to free them. "Do you sense them at all? Were they here?" 

" _Nothing_ should be here," Claire snaps. "This is _Lucifer's Cage_. It's already broken once, if it breaks again..." She trails off, looking ill.

So they were here, at least once. This is where Sam jumped.

"Hey! Get away from there!"

They both turn. A woman is at the gate brandishing something Ben can't make out, her other hand fumbling with the padlock. She must know the combination, because the metal doors creak open a moment later and she rushes through. 

"We've had nothing but trouble from you," the woman says, and her voice would be sweet if not for her merciless gaze. "Leave. Now." And she holds up a mirror, its surface scrawled with blood, and brings her other hand down hard on its surface. 

Nothing happens. The woman is breathing heavily—she must be sixty, maybe seventy years old, and her cozy knit cardigan looks decidedly out of place in this graveyard. Ben takes a tentative step forward, saying "Look, I can explain," but the woman has covered her mouth with her bloody hand, staring at Claire. 

"Oh, honey, I didn't know," she says. "I thought you ended up like your daddy. I'm so sorry."

Claire's jaw clenches—you could never tell she was half buckled over with a headache a moment before. "How are you doing that?"

"Well, I'm a psychic, of course." The woman pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket and begins to clean the blood off her dark skin. "After what happened here a few years ago, I took it upon myself to keep an eye on the place. My name is Missouri Moseley."

"A psychic." Claire still sounds suspicious, but not enough for Ben to think Missouri is lying—at least, probably not, they should really come up with some kind of code word for situations like this. He could swear he's heard the name Missouri Moseley before. One of Bobby's hunting network? Did she know Sam and Dean?

Missouri turns to Ben as that thought crosses his mind. "You're here for the Winchesters?" She lets out a long sigh, hitching the mirror on her hip as Ben gawks at her. "Of course you are. Lord give me strength." 

"You know them?" Ben asks, hardly daring to hope. 

"I did," says Missouri. She frowns at Ben, who's shivering, then back at Claire, who hasn't moved. "Well, now. What say we get you two out of the cold, and you can tell me what kind of foolishness those boys have gotten themselves into."

* * *

Missouri lives in a quiet house about a five minute drive from Stull, indistinguishable from the rest of the street aside from a small sign in the window that says FORTUNES TOLD. The inside is warm and smells like roasting onions, and despite the grandma decor, it feels more like home than anywhere Ben's been in a while.

Not, he adds hastily in his mind, that there's anything wrong with grandma decor.

"Take your shoes off before you go tracking snow into my house," says Missouri, with an eye narrowed at Ben that says she heard him. "Are you hungry? There's chili on the stove, or I could make you some hot chocolate. Sit."

Ben obediently drops onto the low green couch in the front room, careful not to disturb the crocheted afghan across the back. Despite the winter air outside, most flat surfaces in here boast at least one houseplant looking green and healthy, and he wonders if being psychic makes her better at gardening. 

"No, I just pay attention to their watering times," Missouri says, returning from the kitchen with two steaming mugs. "That geranium you're thinking of died because it got too much water and not enough light."

"That's really spooky," Ben says. She'll hear anything he thinks anyway, so he adds, "Do people hate it? When you tell their fortunes?"

Missouri smiles. "Mostly I tell people what they want to hear." She looks up at Claire, still hovering in the doorway. "But I won't lie to you, and I know you can feel it if I do."

"I will," Claire says. She crosses her arms. "What do you want with us?"

"I don't mean you any harm." Missouri puts the two mugs of hot chocolate on the coffee table and then settles into her own chair, watching them both. "But I do want to know why, after all these years, I have a boy looking for Dean Winchester and a girl with—"

Claire makes a sudden, violent motion that Ben only catches out of the corner of his eye, and Missouri cuts herself off. 

"All right," she says gently. "That's your secret to tell, of course it is. I can't help knowing what I know."

_What secret?_ Ben thinks at Missouri as hard as he can. It's not that he wants to invade Claire's privacy, but he needs to know he can trust her; he needs to know that whatever she's been hiding won't end with one or both of them dead in a ditch somewhere. He just needs to know she's okay. 

"Have a seat, Claire," says Missouri. "And take some hot chocolate. Something sweet for your birthday."

" _And_ it's your birthday? Claire!" Ben scoots over grumpily, giving Claire her own couch cushion to sit on. "Why didn't you say anything when I was planning to spend this entire day at a hellgate?"

"It didn't seem relevant," says Claire. "According to my fake ID, I've been 21 for years."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," Missouri interjects sternly. "Ben, if you knew what kind of evil you'd find in Stull Cemetery, why on earth would you go there in the first place?"

Ben sobers, remembering Claire's shout of pain when she came too close to the gate. "Dean disappeared almost a year ago," he says quietly. "Sam too. I've been trying to find them." He tells her the story, trusting her psychic instincts to fill in the gaps when he can't quite find the right words. Claire offers the occasional correction but otherwise stays quiet. When he's finished explaining what they found with Tamara, Ben rubs his face and concludes, "It always seems like demons are after them. I was hoping, if something did trap them in Hell, that there'd be some proof of it here."

Missouri lets out a long sigh and leans back in her chair. "That boy is just like his father."

For a second Ben thinks she means _him_ , that Ben is just like Dean, and it gives him a thrill of pride even though it doesn't actually make sense—if he were Dean he would already have solved this case, he's sure of it. He's probably not even Dean's real kid. 

"You know as well as I do that family is more than blood," says Missouri. "Ten years ago I had Sam and Dean sitting right where you are now, looking for their own father. You see, John had gone missing without telling them where he was going or what he was fighting." She seems to stare past Ben, one hand moving around a finger of the other as though imagining a ring there. "Sam and Dean felt very much like you do now. The fear, the guilt for not doing something sooner. The anger at being left behind."

"Aw, come on," Ben mumbles, shifting on the couch. He doesn't know anything about Dean's dad except the little fragments that slipped through in Dean's speech: _Dad always did it this way_ or _I learned that from my old man_. Ben has the vague impression that Sam and John didn't like each other very much, and that Dean wanted to like John more than he did, but it wasn't something they ever talked about. Now maybe they never will. 

"You'd think Dean would have learned a little about what _not_ to do from John Winchester," Missouri grumbles. "But he's gone and done you the same way his daddy did him."

"He tried not to," Ben says weakly. Calls every Saturday, no matter what, and it's only now that he's starting to understand why Dean insisted on it. The absence of that call had been Ben's first clue that something was wrong. 

"I know you love him, honey," says Missouri. "But if he wasn't going to be there for you, he should never have brought his life down on you two. It was his fault that demon got your mother, not yours."

Ben is on his feet all at once, breath ragged like he's been punched in the chest. Some things he would never say even in the privacy of his own mind, too awful to put in words. In his memory, Dean shoves a shotgun into his arms. _You want your mom to die?_

"This is why I don't tell honest fortunes," Missouri sighs, her eyes sad. "Bathroom's straight down the hall and third door on the right. Take whatever time you need."

Ben flees.

_It's not your fault, it's not your fault_ , he tells himself, stumbling down the hallway. What right does Missouri have to pull that thought from his head, when he's always been so careful not to lay blame at Dean's feet? Lisa Braeden was killed by a demon, that's all there is to it. Ben is going to rescue Dean because Dean kills the kinds of things that kill people's mothers. His life, the life Missouri thinks he should've kept away from them—that's Ben's life now. He saves people. 

Belligerently, Ben doesn't actually go into the bathroom, choosing instead to examine the series of photos lining the hallway. Most of them are of a teenage black boy who looks exasperated to be on camera, usually with a much younger kid on his lap or climbing on his shoulders. All the little ones look about the same age, though it's a different one in each picture. He can only assume these are Missouri's grandchildren. He wonders, a bit meanly, if she ever tells _them_ their honest fortune.

Raised voices from the other room catch his attention, and he skulks back toward them, listening intently.

"—your opinion," Claire is saying. "I didn't come here for therapy, I came here for Ben."

"You're doing that boy a disservice by not telling him," Missouri replies, and Ben's heart rate picks up. "He understands more than you realize. And much as you hate to think about it, he cares about you."

"My life is my business," Claire hisses. "Not his, and certainly not yours. Get out of my head."

There's a squeak of resettling furniture. Ben inches closer, hoping for more, and hears Missouri say: "You find everything okay, Ben?"

He jumps, guilty, and moves into the doorway where she can see him. "I'm fine," he says, which probably sets off Claire's lie detector. He sits back down next to her on the couch. Then, defiant, because she may read minds but she can't control people, he says: "I still wanna find Dean."

Missouri nods, resignation in her eyes. "I figured you would." She sets her mug down and leans forward, intense like she hasn't been since the graveyard. "So I'm going to tell you something for the road you got ahead of you. Hunting is killing work. It hardens your heart, no matter what kind of thing you're killing." 

"Hunting saves people," says Ben. "Monsters deserve to die, end of story."

"I've seen men run themselves into the ground because they couldn't stop killing," Missouri retorts. "They all had their reasons, their quest, their anger. But the job eats people up. It destroys them." She points a finger right at him. "You have a good heart, Ben. So my advice to you is: keep it open. Don't let this job take it from you."

Ben clenches his teeth, looking down at the carpet. He wants to be glad for the good she sees in him, but it still sounds a lot like saying he should give up. "Tell me." He meets Missouri's eyes once more. "Did Sam and Dean ever find their dad?"

She sighs. "Now that, I don't know," she says. "But if you're set on following the same path, I just hope your story has a happier ending."

* * *

Neither of them really want to stay in Lawrence, after that. Claire becomes progressively more at ease behind the wheel the further away they get, glad to be leaving the hellgate behind them—or possibly glad to be leaving Missouri and her uncanny knowledge of Claire's secrets. Her profile flashes by over and over under the streetlights, lit up and glowing and then dark again, window fogged up from the heater behind her. 

"Sorry," Ben says, once they cross the town line. "That didn't really go the way I expected."

Claire glances over. "She shouldn't have said that to you. About your mom."

"What, that it wasn't my fault?" Ben's hands curl up in his lap. "Did it sound like she was lying?"

" _No_ ," says Claire, surprisingly vehement. "I mean that she said it at all. It wasn't hers to tell."

Ben stares out the window at the endless empty fields. "I don't know if she was wrong," he admits. "My mom got possessed while they were using us as bait to get to Dean. I didn't know enough about demons to get it out of her." He knows exorcisms by heart, now; Dean made sure of that. "But even if I had, or if Dean had gotten there faster, it might still have stabbed her before it left. So." He shrugs, still facing the glass.

After a pause, Claire says, "Did you know angels need a human body the same way demons do?"

_The monster that destroyed my family. It was an angel._ "But they need...consent," Ben says. "Don't they?"

"Once they're in, it stops mattering." She grips the steering wheel hard enough that Ben can hear the leather creaking. "It was my dad. That got possessed. And my mom and I got to be demon bait too. So I guess that's why Missouri said we'd understand each other."

He can't see her face in the dark. There's more packed into those few words than she's said to him in half the time they've know each other, and despite the terseness of her voice, he can tell it cost her to say. "That— _fucking_ sucks," Ben says, inadequately, because somehow he feels like _are you absolutely sure you don't like hugs_ will not go over well.

But Claire is startled into a laugh. "Yeah," she says. "It fucking does."

After Ben's mom died, things got muddy for a while. He remembers the feelings more than the events: helplessness and anger and fear, all the time, every day, but more than anything a complete and total failure to comprehend the huge and awful permanence of it. There was no putting it into words to make anyone else even believe it, let alone understand, so there was no putting anything into words at all. The whole world became background noise that he didn't want to be a part of.

Then, Dean's voice. _I saw my mom on the ceiling. She was on fire. The whole world changed on me, and I was so goddamn scared I couldn't say a word._ Dean looked Ben in the eye, knelt down on his level. _So believe me when I say I get how it is. You don't have to talk if you don't want to. You just take your time, okay? I'll be here._

A dusty stack of construction paper and a box of colored pencils appeared in his room not long after that. Ben still isn't sure what made him pick them up instead of just staring through them like he did everything else. Even before everything happened, writing things down had never come naturally to him. But once he set pencil to paper, it came pouring out of him: not words but drawings, page after page of Dean's anti-possession tattoo. 

And suddenly the fear that had paralyzed him began to make some kind of sense. Anyone, anytime, they were all vulnerable. Anybody he loved could turn into one of those black-eyed monsters without a second's warning, and he would be powerless to stop it.

Except Dean. That tattoo meant it would never happen to Dean. It meant it was possible be safe. To fight back. Ben drew it again, over and over until the paper was filled, then did it again on the next sheet of paper, and the one after that—went through the entire stack, reduced half the pencils to nubs. He still didn't know how to say it, but that symbol was the first thing since his mother bled to death under his hands that he actually understood.

Dean got it too, as soon as Ben shoved the stack of paper in his hands. He didn't say thirteen was too young for a tattoo, and he didn't suggest they try and get Marie's permission first. He just said, _I'll make it happen_. And he did. 

It still took Ben a while after that to get his voice back. He got anxious every time he tried, took big deep breaths and couldn't get anything out, couldn't decide what was important enough to warrant his first words in months. Then, while he and Dean were making anti-possession charms for Marie and Katie, he walked into an empty propane tank hard enough to hear bone crack and shouted: _Fuck!_

Dean leapt to his feet, instantly on alert. _What?_ he asked. _What?_

_I broke my fucking toe!_ Ben yelled, and laughed because he was doing it, he was really talking, and Dean laughed too and swept him up in a hug, and when Ben went from laughing to crying he didn't seem a bit surprised. 

_I know,_ he said, because he did. _I know, it's okay. You're okay now. I gotcha._

Ben thinks on that a few days, while they drive up to Minnesota to investigate a haunting. He thinks about how, when he met Claire, she was so closed off he was surprised when he got more than one sentence out of her at a time. He considers the way she won't let him touch her even to help treat her wounds. He thinks about that awful Enochian carved on her legs and how intensely she had zeroed in on his tattoo the first time she saw it.

And he knows what to get Claire for her birthday.

* * *

It takes a little work to set it all up, and a lot of shoddy excuses to explain why they're staying in Minnesota when the haunting turned out to be a prank. Thankfully Amazon shipping is both swift and discreet, and the weather helps him out by dumping a huge snowstorm on them the day Ben finally feels ready to present the whole thing to Claire so she's stuck inside with him. He goes out to his truck for his supplies and comes back in soaked and shivering, even though he parked only a few yards from their door. 

Claire's lying on her bed in a tank top and sleeping shorts, no blanket, doing something on Ben's iPad and looking perfectly comfortable. She glances up when Ben comes in. "What's all this?"

Ben is suddenly nervous. "Well," he says. _Deep breaths, Braeden._ Worst she can do is say no. "I got you something." He sets two plastic grocery bags down on the bed.

Claire sighs, sitting up. "Is this still about my birthday?"

"Not just that!" Ben says, which is perfectly true. "I've just been thinking about what you said. About your family."

She gets quiet, pulling her legs in closer to her. "What about it." 

God, he really should have rehearsed this speech. "When my mom died, I didn't talk. I mean, I completely stopped. Didn't say a word for months. If it hadn't been for Dean—" No, that's all wrong. It isn't about Dean, not really. "When I saw what that thing did to my mom, I felt like I'd never be okay again. Or, _safe_." Here he unzips his jacket and pulls the collar of his shirt down to show her his own mark. "This reminds me that I am."

Claire moves warily closer, eyes on the tattoo, but she doesn't say anything. 

"I remembered the writing on your legs," Ben blurts. "To keep angels away, right? And I was thinking, 'Well, why hasn't she gotten one for demons yet?' But I know you don't like people touching you, so maybe you wouldn't want to go to a tattoo parlor, especially since they might think you're a Satanist or ask what it means or why you're getting it—"

She's staring at him. Maybe this is too much honesty. 

Ben dumps out the first grocery bag and lets the tattoo gun speak for itself. "I got the stuff to do it yourself. Also oranges, to practice on." He dumps the second bag and sends citrus rolling across the bedspread. Now for the hard part. "I do—" He clears his throat. "If you want privacy I can just go take a drive and leave you to it, there are some pretty good tutorials on YouTube and stuff, but I do know how to use a tattoo gun. If you wanted me to teach you."

Claire's still not saying anything. Her eyes go from his face to the bags and back again. 

Ben shrugs, uneasy. "It just...seemed like something you might want. No hard feelings if it's not for you."

She already knows he's being honest. After the most torturous thirty seconds of Ben's life, she finally reaches out and picks up the needle. "Okay," she says. "How does this work?"

* * *

Claire is scarily fast at learning new things. Ben doesn't know if it's because of her psychic thing or just pure pigheaded stubbornness, but just like with shooting and digging graves, she learns the basics of the thing in half the time anybody else would. 

"Are you _sure_ you want to do it tonight?" Ben asks that evening, after they've gone through his supply of oranges. "I mean, it's gonna be on your body forever. You don't want to practice more first?"

"No," Claire says. She rolls one of the demon-protected oranges between her palms. "But I do want you to help me with one thing."

_Really?_ Ben manages not to say. There's an unusually hesitant look on her face, and he doesn't want to make her more uncomfortable than she already is. "Of course," he says. "Anything you need."

Claire lets her breath out, almost like she was expecting some other reaction. "I can use the gun well enough to get by," she says. "But we don't have the stuff for a stencil, and I can't freehand that symbol the way you can. You _can_ freehand it, right?" 

"In my sleep," Ben says, but that's still a far cry from doing it on Claire.

"Good," Claire says. "I want you to draw it on me." She gets to her feet and heads to the bathroom, leaving him a little dazed behind her. "Are you coming?"

Ben has to close his eyes for a moment when he joins her. She's got the left part of her tank top slid down a little over one shoulder, leaning forward to squint critically at her own reflection. They spend so much time together, usually covered in dirt or bodily fluids or both, that sometimes he forgets she really is beautiful. Here in the low yellow light of the bathroom, with her hair falling out of its braid, Ben has to remind himself not to stare. 

"If I'm going to see it every day, I wanted this to look nicer than the last permanent markings I gave myself," she explains stiffly, finally turning away from the mirror. She hesitates, then perches on the closed toilet, avoiding his eyes. "Marker's on the counter," she says, and starts to say something else, but then falls quiet.

She looks like she's bracing herself for something unpleasant. After months of living with her dislike of personal contact, Ben's gotten into an unconscious habit of giving her as much space as he can, and now he isn't quite sure how to go about getting close to her.

Her eyes fly to him as soon as he takes a step forward. By instinct he kneels next to her, face close to the empty spot over her heart, letting her be above him instead of the other way around. He doesn't think he imagines the way her shoulders drop just an inch once he stops looming. He gives her a questioning look, and she returns a small nod, expression a little less strained. He thinks about telling her to hold still just to fill the silence, but he's yet to see her fidget in all the time they've known each other. 

So it's quiet, then, when he first puts the marker to her skin. The snow makes everything seem muffled, like the world is just them and the wind rattling the windows now and then. Ben has never had his face this close to hers. He's glad she can't read thoughts like Missouri, because even though he keeps his hand steady, all he can think about is how good she smells and how nearly fever-warm her skin is in this cold bathroom. Ben's throat is dry. It's a too much; he has to say something. 

"I got my tattoo when I was thirteen," he says. "I knew Sam and Dean had them, and I knew what they were for. When I couldn't talk, I drew it on a piece of paper so they'd understand." He realizes his breath must be ghosting over her skin, the way he can sort of feel hers against his hair, and lowers his voice even more. "It made a big difference, having something permanent on me. I started doodling it everywhere: my homework, my notes, even a stall in the bathroom once." 

The incredible thing is, he can actually feel her stiffness easing as he speaks. He's going to remember this for the rest of his life, he thinks feverently—the first and maybe only time he'll feel Claire Novak go lax under his hands, however minimal he tries to keep the contact between his skin and hers. "One time my English teacher asked if I was, you know, worshipping the devil or whatever. Wanted to have a _talk with my guardian_ because he was _concerned_." Marie really loved that. Ben wets his lips. "But I mean, it's just one of those things that comes out when there's a pencil in your hand and nothing to do, you know?"

Claire is being very still as he draws the outside of the design. Ben goes as slow as he dares, determined to get it just right. 

"My point is, don't worry. It's gonna come out just fine." He finishes the last spike and leans back, taking in a slow breath before he looks up at her. Her eyes are so blue. 

Ah, shit. He really, really wants to kiss her. 

And he knows good and well she'll never be okay with that, ever, which is why he's tried so hard to keep a lid on that kind of thinking before now. You don't go getting crushes on people so emotionally unavailable it takes months of work just to be their friend, and he's not dumb or inconsiderate enough to make a move on her, especially not when she's vulnerable.

She let him be close to her today. He wouldn't throw away that kind of trust for anything—and that's how he knows he's really fucked. 

"There," he says finally, getting to his feet. He clears his throat. If she sees any of this thoughts on his face, she stays quiet. "Good?"

She stands up, and he backs nearly out of the room to let her see her reflection. She traces the lines of the pentagram with her finger. "Perfect." She pauses, and meets Ben's eyes in the mirror. "Thank you." 

"Sure," Ben says, pleased his tone sounds mostly normal, and he didn't wind up saying something stupid like _Anytime!_

"I've got it now," says Claire. "If I need anything, I'll call you."

"Yep," says Ben. "Good luck."

He ducks out, then, and flops face-down on his bed. He manages to wait until he hears the tattoo gun start buzzing to bury his face in his pillow and groan.


	5. February

It's well past dark in Arizona on a day they've spent almost entirely in the truck, pausing only for gas station hot dogs before continuing across the seemingly-endless desert. By tomorrow, they'll be close enough to visit the Grand Canyon; tonight, Ben just really wants some food.

"Dinner?" he says hopefully at the next exit, when Claire gives no sign of pulling over. She blinks at the windshield, and he adds, "Don't go falling asleep at the wheel in my truck, dude."

"Like you haven't been napping the last thirty miles." She changes lanes with her typical contempt for anyone else on the road. "Any requests?"

"Food in large quantities." Ben peers avidly out the window as they enter whatever town this is, but to his dismay the first several restaurants they pass are dark and shuttered. At last, his eyes catch the coveted sign of OPEN 24 HRS. "There!"

It's an IHOP, and a surprisingly busy one for nearly eleven at night, but who is Ben to judge? Claire pulls into the parking lot and then stops, hands flexing oddly on the wheel.

"Oh, wait," says Ben. "You don't like pancakes, do you."

"This is fine." Claire shifts into park and cuts the engine.

"They have other stuff too," Ben says, though he personally is going to consume an entire order of flapjacks and then bacon. "Like...omelettes."

Claire raises her eyebrows but doesn't otherwise dignify that with a response. Fair enough.

They enter just as a couple is leaving, hands in each other's pockets and looking awfully tipsy for a place that doesn't serve alcohol. The guy winks at them as they pass. Ben scurries inside and doesn't understand why everything is so pink until he gets a closer look and realizes: there are hearts. On every surface. Dangling from the ceiling.

He brought Claire to IHOP on Valentine's Day.

"Table for two, please," he squeaks at the host, praying Claire doesn't notice his face going horribly red. It's a good thing this isn't a date, because if Ben was her real boyfriend and he took her to a chain named after her least favorite food, he would deserve to get dumped.

It's not like Ben doesn't know he will never be with Claire that way. His emotions have a mind of their own, though, because he can't even catch a glimpse down her tanktop without remembering the anti-possession tattoo he helped put on her chest, wondering if she feels safer now that she has it, hoping that his clumsy gift brings her some sort of comfort. He hasn't been able to stop thinking about touching her skin since it happened, yet he's equally happy when he manages to tease a smile out of her, even at his own expense. Katie would be laughing her ass off if she knew just how gone Ben really is.

Claire opens the menu like she's going into battle. "Pancakes," she says to the waitress. "Blueberry."

"Are you sure?" Ben asks, once he's given his own order. "You kinda look like you'd rather eat anything else right now."

"Pancakes used to be my favorite food," she says. "I realized it was stupid to keep avoiding them."

Ben squints. "Did you get really bad food poisoning or something?"

Claire rearranges the variety of colored syrups, not looking at him. "No."

Their pancakes arrive, absolutely buried in whipped cream, each stack with a little paper heart stuck in it on a toothpick. Ben's says "sweetie pie." Claire discards hers at once and attacks with singleminded ferocity.

"How are they?" Ben asks, once it becomes weird to keep watching her eat. Claire finishes the mouthful and wipes a drop of syrup off her lip.

"Passable. Not as good as the ones I used to have."

Understanding dawns on Ben. "That's like me when I try to make latkes," he says lightly, dousing his own pancakes in the hot-pink strawberry syrup. "I can follow the recipe as much as I want, but they still won't turn out like my mom's."

Claire pauses with her fork in midair, studying him. He smiles and takes a large bite of his own stack: they are, indeed, passable. "There was a fruit stand on our way home from church," she says after a minute. "My dad would always pick up fresh blueberries when they were in season. He liked to cook."

Ben nearly chokes on pancake and has to swallow several times to recover. She's never voluntarily brought up her father before, never offered information so casually about the life she used to have. He's glad she has good memories, too, and not just whatever terrible things happened after her dad got possessed. "That sounds nice."

"Anyway, I'm sure these were frozen," Claire says, poking at a blueberry on her plate. "Probably most people don't know the difference. But it's not the same."

The rest of the meal passes quietly, awkward at first but soon settling into the easy rhythm of their life on the road. They both clear their plates, and when Ben sees his paper heart about to be cleared with the dirty dishes he salvages it on a whim.

"Hey Claire," he says, joking. "Be my valentine?"

Ben realizes as soon as the words leave his mouth that he has made a terrible mistake, because Claire is the most perceptive person he knows and _he cannot lie to her_. He drops the heart immediately, but the damage is done.

"Ben Braeden," Claire says, poised in her seat as though ready to run at any moment. "You do _not_ have a crush on me."

"Nobody said anything anything about crushes!" says Ben, wishing he could bury himself in dirt. "You know, sometimes things just come out of my mouth for no reason, we really don't need to discuss this—"

Claire leans forward, looking serious. "One. I am in no way interested in the idea of anything even resembling being someone's valentine, now or in the future. Two. I like being friends with you. We are going to _stay friends_. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yep," Ben says. "Yep, crystal, I got it, please kill me now."

"Good." She leans back again.

There's another long silence. Ben thinks on it a moment and can't help but grin.

"What," Claire says flatly.

Ben chuckles. " _You_ like being my friend."

Her face goes absolutely blank for a moment, as though she's only just realized what she said. "Oh my God, Ben."

"You said it, no take backs." It's Claire's turn to cover her face now, but Ben keeps going. "And I like being your friend too. You know what that means?" He jumps to his feet, crowing loud enough for all the late-night IHOP patrons to give him sideways looks. "We are gonna _stay friends_!"

"Ben, sit _down_ ," Claire hisses. "I will steal your truck and _leave you here_ —"

Ben pumps his fist. "You heard it here first, everybody!"

She does walk out and leave him, but she and the truck are still there when he gets to the parking lot. He sees her in the passenger's seat before she notices he's there. When she thinks no one sees her, she's smiling.

* * *

 

It's still not that cold when they leave the restaurant, but Ben's truck makes a very strange clunking noise when he starts it up, and they barely make it to a motel before he decides this is a problem that needs addressing. "I'm gonna poke around the engine to see what that is," he tells Claire, thumping the dash. "Get us a room?"

Claire shrugs and pops open her door, avoiding eye contact as she has been since the IHOP. Ben can't decide if he's imagining the faint pink on her cheeks.

"Dean taught me a lot about cars," he adds, like an idiot. "I could probably fix it myself if I had the parts."

"I'm sure he did," says Claire, dry as the desert around them. "In his absence, maybe we should wait until morning and try a mechanic shop."

"Right," says Ben, and keeps sitting with his hands on the wheel until Claire disappears into the motel office. "Right. Okay. Truck."

He hops out and pries open the hood, thinking about blueberries. He doesn't notice the figure lingering in the shadows until a voice says, "Hey."

Ben turns. It's a guy Claire's age or maybe a little older, dark skin and eyes, his hair loose in an afro around his thin face. He darts a quick look toward the motel before settling back on Ben. "Uh," says Ben.

"I'm not mugging you and I don't have drugs," says the guy. "My name is Aaron, okay? I just wanted to ask you a quick question. Just two minutes."

"Me?" says Ben, a faint alarm bell jangling in the back of his head. He's definitely never met Aaron before, but the face is somehow familiar, like he caught a glimpse somewhere and forgot until just now. "What for?"

Aaron takes a careful step forward, lowering his voice. "That girl you were with," he says. "How long have you known her?"

A whole new kind of dread settles in Ben's stomach. "A few months now," he says. "But she's—she's with me. Do you know her?"

Genuine pity seems to cross Aaron's face. "Let's just say I've met...people like her before. She's not who you think she is."

"I _do_ know who she is," Ben says stubbornly. If Claire were here, would she hear that as a lie? "What do you mean?"

Aaron doesn't actually roll his eyes, but it's strongly implied. "Believe me or don't, but there are things in this world that aren't human. Evil things."

"You're a hunter," Ben realizes. "I'm a hunter too, okay? Claire's not—I would know if I'd been driving around with a monster sitting shotgun."

Aaron looks him dead in the eye. "You sure about that?"

And then, behind him, Claire says, "Ben?"

He doesn't know what kind of expression is on his face when he turns around. Whatever it is, Claire's confusion shutters immediately under an icy mask, and she seems to stop seeing him entirely as her gaze finds Aaron over his shoulder. Her voice is terribly flat as she asks, "Where did you get that?"

There's a thick silver sword in Aaron's hand now. "I'm really sorry about this," he mutters to Ben.

"Whoa, _whoa!_ " Ben steps between them, heart going a million miles an hour. He wants to draw his gun, but he's not sure who he should be aiming at. "What the hell is going on!"

"Kid, I promise I'll explain everything later," says Aaron, muscles tense in his forearms. "First, I'm getting rid of that thing wearing her body."

"Look, I would know if Claire was possessed, okay?" Ben really, really does not like the look of that sword. "She's got a tattoo to keep demons out, we both have. I can get some holy water if you want to test it. Right, Claire?"

Aaron hasn't moved, eyes locked on Claire's, and Ben is pretty sure neither of them have blinked. "I didn't say it was a demon."

"This body is _mine_ ," Claire says. "I was born in it. There's nothing possessing me, and if there was—" She looks to Ben, absolutely poisonous. "Trust me, you would know the _fucking_ difference."

"I've killed your kind before," Aaron says. With the hand not holding the sword, he reaches into his shirt and pulls out a small vial on a chain, the glass swirling with white-blue light. "You're the first one stupid enough to take a human, though."

"If you're like me, you ought to know I'm not lying," Claire snaps. "I _am_ human, all right? He's not here anymore!"

"Who's not?" says Ben, at the same time as Aaron steps forward, brandishing the blade.

"And why the hell would I know whether you were lying?"

Something clicks in Ben's head, and he almost cries with relief at how much sense it makes. "She's a psychic! Claire isn't possessed, she's psychic. That must be why you can sense each other." Ben takes hold of Aaron's wrist and tries to push him back—which, given that Aaron has several inches on him and seems made of solid muscle, has absolutely no effect. "You guys are like cats, I swear. The last psychic we ran into got all spooked when Claire showed up too, but we talked it out and she's totally fine." As soon as he thinks of Missouri, the nagging familiarity about Aaron's face suddenly makes sense. "That's where I saw you," he says slowly. "You're in Missouri's photos."

" _What_?" says Claire.

"Missouri?" Finally Aaron looks away from Claire and down at Ben. "You know Missouri?"

Ben gives up on moving Aaron's arm and steps back. "We met her in Kansas. She's your grandma, right?"

"...something like that." Aaron's eyes narrow, but more in confusion than hostility. "Don't move," he warns, and pulls a phone out of his pocket.

"It'll be fine," Ben says, more to himself than either of them. Dean trusted Missouri, which means she must be on the level, and Missouri said she made a mistake thinking Claire was dangerous. Ben would know if his traveling companion of four months was anything other than human.

"It's me," Aaron says into his phone. "I'm still in Arizona, I found these two white kids who say they know you? The guy seems normal, but the girl—" He pauses. "Claire. Or that's what she's calling herself. Said you had sensed her before. You know what she feels like?" He listens for a minute, and then his whole posture goes stiff as he stares at Claire. "Jesus."

"What's she saying?" Ben mutters, but Claire doesn't answer.

"Then why didn't she say so in the—" Aaron winces, looking away from them and hunching his shoulders. "No, I—yes. Yes ma'am. Sorry." He sighs, silent a few more moments, then says, "I will. Tell Hunter I'll try to be home soon, okay?" And with that, he hangs up.

Ben watches the sword warily, eyes flicking back and forth to Claire's expressionless face. "Okay, so we're cool now, right?"

"Sure," says Aaron, and shrugs, but he doesn't put the sword away.

Claire walks forward, moving past Ben like he's not even there. "Cut me."

"What? No!" says Ben, but Claire rolls up her jacket and sticks her arm out.

"If that's what it takes for you to believe me, then do it. I'm not lying."

Aaron takes her by the wrist. Claire doesn't move. Cautiously he raises the sword, then digs it deep into the muscle of Claire's forearm, slicing a long line from elbow to wrist. She bleeds red, nothing else.

"No light," Aaron says.

"No light," Claire repeats. Her blood drips onto the withered grass below, and Ben knows her face well enough to see it hurts her, even if she's trying not to show it. "Are you satisfied?"

"Okay," says Aaron. "Okay, yeah, I'm—sorry about that."

"Come here, you idiot," says Ben, searching his pockets for anything he could use to staunch Claire's wound. For lack of better options, he pulls out a packet of kleenex. Relief makes his hands shake as he presses a tissue to her arm. "Was this really necessary?"

"Look, I really am sorry," says Aaron. "I've been tracking an angel here for weeks, and I thought—well, you know what I thought."

Claire pulls free of Ben, covering the cut herself, though she doesn't seen to notice the blood on her fingers. "How do you do that?" she asks. "Track them, I mean."

Aaron wipes his sword clean and puts it back in his coat. "I can hear them," he says. "Hundreds of miles away, sometimes. Until now, all the angels I've met have been in animals—deer, crows, wild dogs. But this one took a person."

Claire flinches and goes still. "You can tell that before you've found it?"

Aaron gives a thin, humorless smile. "I can tell that from the footprints it's been leaving."

"You guys," Ben interrupts. "Look, Aaron, we can help you on your hunt, but can we please take this inside? Claire needs a real bandage, and I'm freezing my ass off."

"I'm fine," says Claire.

"No, he's right," says Aaron. Then, to Ben: "What is your name, actually? Missouri didn't say."

"Ben Braeden," he says. "I'm a hunter."

"Ben, okay. And Claire. I'm Aaron, sorry I tried to stab you." Aaron looks at their surroundings for what seems to be the first time—this spot is wide open, for all it's the dead of night, and something howls in the distance. "Let's get inside."

* * *

Claire leads them both to the motel room she booked for the night, her hurt arm tucked against her stomach while she fights the sticky lock. Their bags have already been brought in, and thankfully Claire gets out the first aid kit without Ben having to remind her.

"Just so y'all know, I normally work alone," says Aaron, closing the door behind them. "But I could use some help on this one, so." He drops something onto the table. "I'll put that back in your truck."

 _"Hey,"_ Ben sputters when he recognizes the missing piece of his engine. No wonder it made that noise. "Not cool, man!"

"I felt her as soon as you guys got to town," Aaron says, gesturing at Claire. "Needed to stop you before you left again. Sorry about that."

Ben wants to voice his _very strong objections_ to messing with a man's wheels, but Claire speaks before he gets the chance. "Is that the only reason you're here?" she says, tying off the bandage around her arm. "For me?"

Aaron shakes his head. "There's something else walking the canyon. Something stronger." He reaches down into his shirt and pulls out that glowing vial of light he showed earlier. "This is grace from a dead angel. I collect it from the ones I kill. Normally, any angel who comes down to earth feels this grace and thinks it's one of their own. They come flocking right to me."

Claire looks physically ill at the sight of it. "Why would you want them anywhere _near_ you?"

"I've got quite a collection now," Aaron says, which Ben notes is not an actual answer. "And who can be sorry to see one less angel in the world?"

"And when you kill them," Claire asks, voice hard, "what happens to the vessel?"

A look passes between them that Ben doesn't quite understand. "I don't kill people," Aaron says. "I told you, this is the first time I've found one that's wearing a human body. They take animals now, I don't know why. And if you've ever seen something inside a deer trying to speak English through its vocal cords, you'd know it's a mercy to put it down."

Claire studies his face, eyes narrowed, but Aaron doesn't flinch. After a moment, she looks away.

Aaron sits down on one of the beds and pulls out his phone. He's got a map that looks a lot like Tamara's, obviously tracking something's movements. "So this one that took a human vessel," he says. "It's been wandering around the Grand Canyon for a couple weeks now. I don't know if it's scared of other angels or if they've started warning each other about me, but whenever I try to lure it in, it vanishes. I just can't catch up to it."

"How do you catch one once you do?" Ben asks, still stuck on the image of a possessed deer trying to talk. "It's not like you can just draw a devil's trap and wait."

"I don't really know how a devil's trap works," Aaron says after a minute. "But if it does what it sounds like, the answer is I've got a big bottle of holy oil in my backseat."

If Ben didn't know any better, he'd swear Claire looks jealous. "Where did you find it?"

"I've been doing this since I was a kid," Aaron says. "You pick things up."

Ben can already tell the sooner they're done with this hunt, the better. "What's it do?"

"Make a big circle around one and light it up," says Aaron promptly. "Angels can't cross a line of holy fire. Keeps them contained until you can kill them."

So basically a devil's trap. Ben looks at Claire, then back to Aaron. "So what're we gonna do about this one?"

"The problem is luring it in," Aaron says. "This angel is hellbent on avoiding me, it seems like, so I figure I can use someone like you."

"A hunter?" Ben asks, skeptical.

"A kid," says Aaron. "No offense, but you look pretty harmless. It won't suspect a thing."

" _Hey_ ," Ben says, flushing up to his ears, but Claire cuts in.

"We are not using Ben as _bait_."

"All he's gotta do is light up some oil," Aaron says. "Look, it takes almost the same route over and over. If it couldn't feel me coming, I'd have had it weeks ago. I know _exactly_ where it'll be, I just can't spring the trap myself, and what with how you are you can't do it either. Isn't it better to ask a hunter than someone off the street?"

"He's never met an angel before!"

"I've met demons," Ben says, stung. "And they were in people, too—people I cared about."

Claire turns to him. "Angels are the things demons are afraid of, do you understand that? You can't let your guard down for a _second_. Not even after you trap it."

He's never seen her look so scared. Scared for _him_ , he realizes with a pang, and suddenly wishes he could touch her, just this once. "Hey, come on," he says gently. "I'll be okay. We can't just let it keep possessing someone, right?"

He doesn't mention her father, but he can see it in her face that that's who she's thinking of. Her throat works. "I don't like it."

"I'll call you guys the second this thing shows," Ben assures her. "Aaron takes out angels all the time. It'll be fine."

"What did I say about promises," Claire mutters, but then she shakes her head and addresses Aaron instead. "What happens after you get there?"

"I scare it out of the person it's wearing, and everybody goes home," says Aaron. "With any luck, it'll hop into some local wildlife and we can kill it there."

"And what if it won't leave?" Claire asks. "What then?"

"It'll leave," Aaron assures her. "If it thinks I'm gonna kill it—not that I'm gonna take a stab at a human being, but if it _thinks_ I will—it'll rabbit."

"But if it doesn't," Claire insists.

Aaron frowns at her. "Don't worry," he says. "It will."

* * *

The Grand Canyon is just as beautiful in person as Ben always thought it would be. Dean used to talk about coming here all the time—they could hardly travel, with Sam's brains like scrambled eggs, but he'd still tell his brother about it in that wistful someday-voice for a magical future where Sam got better. It feels wrong to come here without them—like admitting they aren't coming back.

Aaron only has the one angel sword, but he gives Ben and Claire each a two-liter of oil and helps them pour circles at strategic points around one of the overlooks. "It oughta be here around sundown," he says as they finish. "You won't be able to miss it. Look for someone with bloody feet."

Ben blinks. "Uh, _what_?"

"I told you," Aaron says, "I could tell it was human from the footprints. That thing has been wandering around the desert with bare feet for weeks. It must have started bleeding and not cared enough to do anything about it."

And on that cheerful note, he claps Ben on the shoulder and starts heading back down the trail. "Let's go," he calls to Claire.

Claire walks up very close to Ben and reaches for his wrist. Ben freezes, too surprised to stop her as she slides off his bracelet and folds it in her palm. He feels practically naked without it. "The angel will be able to sense this," she says, and slips it into her pocket. "If you want it back, don't die."

Then she departs too, leaving Ben alone with the phantom sensation of her fingertips against his skin.

Ben spends the next few hours messing around on his tablet, half-heartedly taking pictures of the scenery so he looks like a tourist to something that doesn't know any better. He jumps every time something rustles in the bushes. He's trying to save the battery on his phone, but he texts Claire and Aaron every fifteen minutes to let them know the angel hasn't shown yet. As the sun begins to sink below the horizon, temperature falling with it, Ben wonders if it ever will.

Then there's a crunch of gravel from further down the trail. Footsteps.

Ben knows he's found his mark as soon as he's turned around. She can't be any older than Claire, this girl moving slow and aimless, pale face turned up to the cold winter sun. She doesn't look tired or distressed or even cold, despite the wind whipping her dark hair behind her. On the contrary, she's underdressed like Claire always is, wearing nothing but a light sweater and leggings under her dress. Ben looks down and sees the red, shredded ends of fabric flapping around her feet. Just like Aaron said, she's been taking the entire Grand Canyon in flats for weeks without stopping, and the angel feels neither the cold or the pain. That's just for the meatsuit.

Was this what it was like for his mom? Near the end of their imprisonment, Ben was the only one to ever ask for water. She didn't struggle against their bonds as much. Did she get thirsty? Was she stiff? Cold? Could she feel his numb fingers squeezing around hers, or was she too far under?

 _Focus, Ben._ He couldn't save his mom, but he can help this girl. "Hi," he says as she gets close.

The angel starts. "Hello." She looks him over like she's x-raying his soul, creepy in a way even Claire isn't, but there's no mysterious powers in Ben for her to find. "Why are you here?"

"Are you kidding?" Ben asks. He throws his arm back towards the sky. "Check out this sunset!" On a stroke of inspiration, he holds up his tablet. "I saw a brochure that says this is one of the best spots to watch from. I've been taking pictures all day. Wanna see?"

She smiles, and Ben has to hold down a shiver. It's like something doesn't quite know how to work her facial muscles. "I _love_ sunsets," she says. "Each one is God's own masterpiece." She moves closer.

"They're really something," Ben agrees. Having an angel peer over his shoulder is a lot more terrifying than he thought it would be. "I'm Ben, by the way." He sticks out his hand.

She stares at his hand for a moment, then hesitantly takes it. "I am Hael." Her skin is cold to the touch. Ben has a second to worry that maybe her vessel is already dead before the handshake is over and he has to let go.

"Nice to meet you," Ben says. "Hey, can I take a picture of you? I think there's a good spot higher up."

Most girls in their right mind would find the invitation a little creepy, but this thing is no girl. "I might break your camera."

Geez, at least demons are subtle. Ben forces a laugh. "Aw, come on," he says. "You're really pretty. Don't you want to remember that you were here?"

Her head tilts to the side. "I suppose it would be nice to have something to look at when I can't be here in the flesh," she says. "And you're right. I am pretty."

Ben turns away to hide his shudder. "Come with me, then."

He tries to make small talk as they climb further up the path, but her vague non-answers would put Claire to shame. He finds out that her favorite color is orange, she's not fond of her family, and she came here once before, many years ago. She also likes making things.

"What kind of things?" Ben asks, when they're almost there. "I'm into woodworking, myself." He rubs the bare place on his wrist where his bracelet is supposed to be.

"Lots of things," Hael says brightly. "Big things, grand things. Like this canyon."

Ben gapes. "Uh. You mean, a painting of it?" He's actually not sure if he's playing dumb on purpose or if he just can't make that compute.

"I've never painted," Hael replies.

They finally reach the clearing where the holy oil is poured, and Hael steps right up to the canyon's edge, her face in bliss. The sunset really is beautiful from here. For just a moment, the horror of what's standing next to him lessens, overwhelmed by the golden display of colors in front him. He wishes Sam and Dean could see it.

"Okay, stand right there," Ben instructs, pointing to a rock about three feet to her left. If he looks carefully, he can see the circle of holy oil gleaming in the light. Hael moves as instructed, and Ben watches her go, heart pounding against his ribs.

"Make sure you capture the canyon," she orders. "I want to see my creation always."

"You got it," Ben says. He kneels down and uses the movement to hide the matchbook he pulls out of his pocket. "Turn your face toward the sun."

The minute her head turns, Ben strikes a match. "What are you doing?" Hael asks, turning back to him at the sound. There's a heart-stopping three seconds between her question and the fire hitting the oil below him.

Claire was right that Ben's never met an angel in person before. Unclear feelings about Castiel aside, Dean never had a good word to say about them, and Ben knows it has something to do with how terrified Sam always was of bright light, how all the trees on Bobby's property got blown down like a bomb went off because _something_ picked a fight with an angel. He remembers what Claire told him: angels are the things demons are afraid of. They're so much bigger than the human bodies they squeeze themselves inside, and to forget that even for a moment is to die.

Ben didn't live to the ripe old age of seventeen by being stupid. He's running as soon as the ring of holy oil blazes to life, ducking behind a nearby outcropping of rock, and that's the only reason he'll have many years of hunting ahead of him yet because when the angel Hael screams her fury she levels every tree in a twenty foot radius. Even with cover, the blast still blows Ben back several feet, knocking the wind out of him.

"How _dare_ you!" Hael shrieks. Ben isn't listening; he's forcing himself onto his feet, choking on canyon dust, fumbling for his phone and moving as far as he can down the trail without losing sight of the circle of fire. He dials Claire.

"I got her," he coughs, voice shaking. "She's stuck, for now. Get here as fast as you can."

* * *

Ben stays as far as he can from Hael while he waits for Claire and Aaron to arrive. She glares at him, pacing the edge of the circle, but it seems that first blast was all she had to threaten him with—or at least all she's willing to use at the moment. Both of them turn at the sound of hurried footsteps crunching down the path, and Hael gives a low snarl as Aaron comes into view.

"There you are." The sword flashes in Aaron's hand as he strides toward the circle. Claire follows, silent and unarmed, but anyone would be a fool to think in this moment that she's not dangerous. Aaron steps up to the flames around Hael and smiles. "You've been giving me quite the runaround, haven't you?"

"Release me," Hael orders. "Do it quickly and I let you live."

"I don't think you understand how this goes." Aaron points the sword straight at Hael's thin chest—at the body of the girl she's wearing. "I've got a few questions for you. You're going to answer. Then you leave this vessel, and maybe I'll let _you_ live."

"You think I'm afraid of you?" Hael's eyes glow, the firelight reflecting off eerie blue surfaces. "You are children. I _built_ this place."

Aaron laughs quietly. "You know who else wasn't afraid of me?" He slips his hand beneath his shirt to pull out the shimmering vial of grace, dangling it between two fingers. "Ofraniel. And Rikbiel. And Zofael. They learned better."

That, at least, seems to give Hael pause. "You won't kill me while I'm in this body," she says, but her voice is unsure. "We aren't supposed to take human vessels anymore but I knew, I heard about the others you killed, I knew this form would keep me safe. I wanted to see my canyon." Her slender fingers smooth down the front of the dress she's wearing, knees smudged with dust. "She agreed to this, you know. She let me do it."

Next to Ben, Claire shivers almost imperceptibly; he wouldn't have known at all if they weren't so close.

"Enough," snaps Aaron. "Where is Balthazar?"

"Balthazar?" Hael throws her head back and laughs. "You stupid boy, Balthazar has been dead for a year."

Aaron goes stock still. "What?"

There's nothing remotely human in the grin that stretches across Hael's face. "We don't even know what killed him," she says. "His voice was blotted from the Host and he was alone. If you're lucky, maybe you'll find his tree."

His tree? Ben does the math in his head. It's been at least a year since that angel died in Bobby's backyard, and Sam said they couldn't figure out what happened to it—only that it left one hell of a mess behind. Ben carved the palo santo from that tree himself. Could it have been the same angel?

He touches his wrist, and realizes Claire still has his bracelet. Somehow he doesn't think now is the time to ask for it back.

Aaron is breathing hard, audible even over the sound of the flames. "Balthazar had—contracts," he says, glancing back at Claire and Ben. "He had a claim on someone's soul. If he's dead, where did that go?"

Hael sneers. "You mean those deals he made? Peddling Heaven's weapons like parlor tricks? Anyone stupid enough to sell their soul to a petty thief like Balthazar deserves what's coming to them."

"Answer me!" Aaron shouts. "Or you can stay in there and rot! Who has my contract?"

" _Your_ contract?" Hael rakes her eyes up and down Aaron's body. Ben braces himself for—something, he doesn't even know, but Aaron's hand is shaking and Ben isn't too sure he remembers right now that there's a person in there. Hael's eyes flash, and then she giggles and claps her hands like the girl she most certainly isn't. "Oh, this is delightful," she says. "You know him already, don't you? I can see his grace inside you."

"The fuck do you mean, inside me?" says Aaron.

Hael scoffs. "I know you stole it. You could never hunt us otherwise. But that's the joke." Hael extends a finger, pointing straight at Aaron. "Any claim of Balthazar's now belongs to Castiel. And that's precisely whose grace you have lodged in your soul."

_"What?"_

Several things happen at once. Aaron recoils, staring down at his own chest in horror, his arm going slack. As soon as his eyes leave Hael, there's another ferocious blast of wind from the circle of holy fire, knocking all of them back even further. Ben staggers. The sword gets knocked from Aaron's hand. And Claire, faster than any of them, picks it up and strides toward Hael.

"No need to ask where your grace came from, girl," Hael says. She's still grinning, but the effort of that blast seems to have drained her; her eyes dart around for an escape. "Castiel, so high and mighty, telling us not to take human vessels, but he leaves you like this?"

"Shut up," says Claire, icy cold. Alarm bells are ringing all over Ben's head, but he can't stop to figure out why now; Claire is holding the blade across the fire to press against Hael's throat. "Get out of her."

"His old vessel is falling apart, you know." Hael darts back, and the holy flames keep Claire from following her. "We thought he'd start following his own rules once that body gave out. Yet here you are, his little spare, with a piece of his grace keeping you open for his return. Tell me, do you miss him?"

Claire makes a sound, a terrible sound, and Ben's heart recognizes it because that sound is exactly what came out of him when his mother died. In his mind, a hundred carefully-collected scraps of information start falling into place.

_When I was eleven, a monster destroyed my family. The kind of monster like nothing I've ever seen._

_Oh, honey, I thought you ended up like your daddy. I'm so sorry._

_Did you know angels need a human body the same way demons do?_

_I was eleven._

Claire has never, not once, called herself psychic. Because that's not what she is.

As Ben comes to this realization, Claire leaps over the burning oil and lands inside the circle with Hael. Aaron swears. In a flurry Claire knocks Hael bodily the ground, knees pinning Hael's arms, sword digging into the girl's soft neck.

"Let me _go_ ," cries Hael, thrashing. "This vessel is mine as much as you were his. She said yes. I didn't do anything wrong!"

"Claire!" shouts Ben. Only a moment ago the sky was clear, but now thunder rumbles in the distance. "Claire, stop, come back—"

"Is she out of her mind?" Aaron demands.

Claire ignores them both. "Hear me, for I speak the truth," she says in a low voice. "These two might show you mercy while you're wearing a human vessel. I won't." She grabs Hael's hair with her other hand, tilting her head back, baring the throat. "You think she knew what she meant when she said yes? You think being chained to a comet is something you can _consent_ to?" She gives the hair a vicious yank. "You have no right to her. To any of us. And I. Do not. Miss him."

"Claire," Ben says, feeling small and scared. "Don't kill her."

"I'm doing her a favor," Claire says, not for one minute taking her eyes off Hael's face. "I know how it feels. Better dead than a vessel."

"You won't," says Hael.

"You _can't_ ," says Aaron.

"Watch me," says Claire. She draws the sword back—

And Hael screams, the screaming turning into a shrill whining sound that sets Ben's ears ringing. Light pours from her vessel's body, from her eyes and nose and mouth and ears.

"Shut your eyes!" Claire shouts. "You'll be blinded! Shut your eyes!"

Ben slams them closed, shielding his face with his hands. There's another wave of energy that knocks him off his feet, but all he can do it curl into himself and wait for all that light and noise to go away, until and there's nothing left but the crackling of fire.

Someone lets out a sob. Ben's eyes pop open.

The girl is alive. She's alive, and she's crying her eyes out, lying there in the dirt. Claire is the first to sit up, tossing the sword away and moving immediately to the girl's side. "Hey," she says, gentle; more gentle than Ben has ever heard her. "Hey, hey. She's gone. The worst is over now." She leans in to catch the other girl's eye. "I'm Claire. Can you tell me your name?"

The girl draws a long, shuddering breath. "Hael."

Claire reaches out, soft, and touches the girl's face. " _Your_ name."

"It's, it's..." The girl sounds lost for a moment, then she lets out another choked noise. "Oh! Gloria! I'm Gloria!" She grabs Claire's hand and bursts into tears once more.

Ben forces himself upright. He's sore all over. Aaron is up, too, but he's making no move towards either of them or towards his sword.

"Where do you live, Gloria?" Claire asks. Ben can't get over how patient and kind her tone is. It's a complete one-eighty from the hardened, distant person Ben's been living with for the past three and a half months.

"I ran away," Gloria chokes. "I live with my dads in Phoenix but we got in a fight and I—oh, God, they're gonna be furious. They're gonna hate me!"

"I bet they're worried sick," Claire says. "I bet they think about you every day. But we're gonna take you home, okay, Gloria? You get to go home. Can you stand up?"

"No," says Gloria. "No, oh please, I can't. I can't take another step."

Aaron moves forward too. "I can carry you," he says. "If it's okay."

Gloria nods. "Thank you," she says, as Aaron lifts her up. "Thank you."

* * *

No one talks on the way down the trail, though Gloria cries and cries against Aaron's shoulder as he carefully picks his way over the rocks. When they're finally back at the vehicles, Claire holds her hand out to Ben and says, "Keys."

Ben takes them out of his pocket, but he can't help hesitating. "Claire, are you—are you gonna be okay?"

"I'm fine," she says. "I'm taking Gloria home."

That's fair, that's more than fair, Gloria probably needs someone who understands her right now and apparently Claire knows _exactly_ what it's like to be possessed by an angel. "You could have—" Ben chokes, fingers shaking as he offers the keys. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Don't," Claire says. "I don't want to talk about it. I don't want you to ask me about it. I don't even want you to think about it. Get her in the car." She unlocks the passenger door of the truck and motions to Aaron.

"You sure?" Aaron says, shifting Gloria's weight in his arms. "I don't mind taking her."

"I want to go with Claire," says Gloria in a small voice, wiping her face. Obligingly, Aaron sets her in the passenger seat of the truck, helping her untangle her limbs.

"Claire," Ben tries.

"I'll bring your damn truck back, Ben," she says. "Go wait at the motel."

Ben's throat is threatening to close up. "I'm not worried about the _truck_."

Claire doesn't even look at him as she climbs into the driver's seat. " _Go._ "

The truck peels away. Beside him, Aaron lets out a long, slow breath.

"Gotta say, that was not what I expected," he says. With a beep, he unlocks his own car and nods at Ben. "C'mon, I'll give you a ride back."

Ben climbs in and stares blankly at the dashboard as they start to drive away. The canyon is lit by moonlight now, beautiful, and he can't even see it. As they approach the motel, Ben turns to Aaron. "Did you know?"

Aaron hesitates, then nods. "Missouri told me."

"She wanted Missouri to keep it a secret," Ben says. "We were there, and they were talking about it when I left the room, but Claire never told me anything. I had no idea it had happened to her."

"Well, how are you supposed to talk about a thing like that?" Aaron asks. "I mean, what do you even _say_?"

Ben swallows, thinking of his mother.

"Like, take me for example. This thing with Balthazar." Aaron clears his throat. "I made a deal when I was younger—a lot younger, it was stupid, but I was mad. Mad enough to be desperate." He doesn't explain why, and Ben doesn't ask. "I got no idea how this claim on my soul works, if I get ten years like on crossroads deals or if I'm gonna drop dead tomorrow with no warning and no chance to say goodbye. And now I find out that Balthazar is dead, but Castiel inherited all his shit, and apparently I've got part of his grace that's _living_ in me?" He lets out a breath. "I mean, what the fuck? What do you do with something like that?"

"I think—I don't think Castiel cares about souls," says Ben, though apparently there's far more he doesn't know about Castiel than Dean ever let on. Only now does it occur to him that he could have asked Hael where to find him, whether Castiel knows anything about what happened to the Winchesters—but even getting more information about Dean wouldn't be worth making Gloria live through that one second longer.

Aaron shakes his head. "You heard how Claire talked about him. He's just like the rest of them."

They pull into the parking lot, and Aaron turns off the car. Both of them glance awkwardly at the other.

"You could come with us," Ben says, hesitant. "You're looking for Castiel, we're looking for the Winchesters, one's bound to lead to the other."

Aaron bites his lip. "I appreciate that, but—I promised someone I'd be home soon. I gotta go back to Kansas." He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. "I can't give you my only sword, either. But I'll leave you my number, and if I find that bastard, I'll call you up. That's a kill Claire deserves to make herself."

Ben shudders. He can't imagine killing that demon while it was wearing his mother, even as a kindness. They exchange contacts, and before he leaves Ben says, "Let us know, though, right? If you ever change your mind."

Aaron laughs. "Truth is, I'd love to retire, man. This gig _sucks_." Ben can't argue with him there. "But I'll tell you something—" Aaron looks behind them toward the dark road, face going serious. "I tell you what: I'd still rather be in my shoes than hers."


	6. March

Claire is gone.

"Hey. It's me again."

Claire is gone and Ben doesn't know what he's supposed to do, where he can go, if she's okay—

"I don't know if you're getting these, but I figured if you wanted me to stop that badly, you'd at least send me a text or something to make me shut up. Which you could. So."

He should never have fallen asleep, waiting for her to come back. He doesn't even know if she's alive or dead.

Ben swallows, thickly. "I don't know what else I can say. But I'm not—I'm not mad, if that's what you're worried about. I don't think any less of you. I'm not chasing you. I just want to know that you're safe." He's upped his frequency to postcards to Marie since she left, that's for sure. "Claire, I really liked being friends with you too. It'd be cool if we could keep on doing it."

Ben hangs up, and falls back into bed. There's nothing left to say.

* * *

She didn't leave a note. When Ben woke up his keys were lying on his bed, his truck in the parking lot, but all of Claire's things were gone and there was no message for him anywhere at all. Ben waits in that town for almost a week before accepting the truth: between one breath and the next, Claire Novak vanished from Ben's life as quickly as she'd come, with no intention of ever coming back.

Like any force of nature, Claire left a path of destruction behind her. Ben wakes alone, drives alone, eats alone, sleeps alone, and it's so much more terrible after finally having someone along with him, even someone as distant as Claire. She was the calm of the shitstorm his life's been since Sam and Dean went missing, and now that she's gone everything is even harder than it was when he first set out.

_That's what we'll do, then. Sticking together, helping people._

How is he ever gonna find them without her?

He can't stay in Arizona forever. He thinks about calling Claire to tell her where he's going, in case she needs him, but that's stupid. She still has his number. It's clear she doesn't need him at all.

He's feeling lonely and aimless, so he decides to head for Colorado, and visit Katie if nothing else better comes to him on the way.

Nothing does.

* * *

Ben slinks into the Salt Round right after last call, if the customers filing out as he enters are anything to go by. Katie, turning chairs over onto the empty tables, notices him immediately. " _Ben?_ " she asks. "Oh my God, what are you doing here?"

It's so nice to see her. Life's not totally like it was before, he reminds himself. He has Katie now. "I just—I just—" He blows his breath out in miserable frustration. His words are all backed up again.

"Where's—" But Katie seems to understand the look on his face before she says the name. "One sec," she says. "I'm clocking out early."

She comes back with a bowl of ice cream and a Corona for each of them, underage or not. Ben swears her to secrecy and then tells her the whole terrible story: everything from eating pancakes together to Hael's revelation to coming back and finding Claire gone. He feels a little guilty even as he does it, but Katie's his best friend and they've always told each other everything. Claire certainly wouldn't approve, but she's not here now, is she? Just like Dean, she's left him all alone, and he'll probably never see her again.

"Don't tell me I deserve it," he says miserably. "I know leaving you and Marie wasn't any better, I _know_ , but I thought Claire..."

"Hey, come on. Nobody deserves that, not even you." Katie pats his arm. "She really hasn't said anything at all?"

"Not a word." Ben's ice cream has gone all melty. He buries his head in his hands. "What am I even supposed to _do_ now?"

There's a long silence. This, Ben knows, is Katie being kind and trying to think of something to say besides _go home_ and _stay here_. Before she can get there, though, the kitchen doors burst open and Tommy storms out.

"What, are you going _now_?" Haley shouts from inside. "It's the middle of the fucking night!"

"I'm going to visit _Ben_!" Tommy hollers back over his shoulder. "If I decide to go any-fucking-where else, I'll _call_ you, _Mom_!"

"Fuck you!" Haley yells, as Tommy strides straight past Ben and Katie's table and out the door, slamming it so hard the windows rattle.

Ben blinks. "Did he mean me?"

"Their other brother," Katie says. "I call him Collins. Can't have two Bens running around in my life."

"Cute," Ben says, secretly flattered.

"I gotta text him," Katie says, pinching the bridge of her nose. "They've been doing this shit all fucking night. Argued straight through my dinner break when Haley was supposed to be covering me. Tommy burned three different orders, and who has to apologize to the customer for it? Not fucking Tommy!"

Ben frowns. "What's their problem?"

"There's a wendigo up in Wisconsin." Katie gets out her phone and starts tapping out a text. "They're a touchy subject around here. I think Tommy had a run-in with one of them a long time ago and lost a couple of friends, I never got the whole story. One of our customers a couple of weeks back said he was gonna get it, but now he's stopped picking up his phone, and they figure he's dead."

"Yikes," says Ben, thinking of the warding outside.

"So Tommy, who's _not even a hunter_ , feels all guilty and macho and wants to go after the thing his own stupid self. Haley told him he's a fucking idiot, which, I love the guy, but yes, he is. And _he_ said she's being smothering and controlling. And on, and on, and fucking on."

Ben perks up. "So they need a hunter, huh?"

"Oh, no no no." Katie takes both his hands in hers. "Ben. You're _seventeen_. That thing probably already killed a guy well into his forties. You are not going after a wendigo by yourself, _especially_ with no backup."

Too bad his backup left him high and dry. Ben jerks his hands away, stung. "What else am I supposed to do? Mope around forever? I tried that! All it does is make me sad! I've killed things on my own before, plenty of times. I can't just _give up_ on, on life, on Sam and Dean—"

"That thing has nothing to do with Sam and Dean!" Katie says, standing up. "It's already killed somebody and if you die out there now there won't even be anyone to come tell me—" She stops, eyes bright. "To tell me you—"

"Hey, hey." Ben stands too, and hugs her. "I'm sorry. I'll just go and check it out. I know a lady I can call if I really need help." Tamara wouldn't be thrilled, but she'd come. Probably. "But better someone who has practice than someone like Tommy, right? I'll go scope it out, and then you can tell Tommy and Haley to calm the hell down."

"You never listen." Katie sniffs into his shoulder. "You're an idiot and you're going to get killed one of these days and what the hell am I gonna say to Marie—"

Ben pats her hair. "I'll be back before you know I'm gone," he says, but his feet are already itching to be out the door. "There's gotta be someone else looking into a case like that. You'll see. When I get there, there'll already be someone on it."

* * *

There's a fat lot of nothing anywhere near where this hunter was last seen. A rainstorm has been following Ben since Nebraska and it just won't let up, the rain turning into mist and to sleet and then back into rain as he drives past lake after lake, the road all shrouded in pine trees. Midway through the second day he finally finds himself in the sorry excuse for a town beside this mountain—one church, one school, one diner named for the local rail line and a hotel that looks like three double-wides stacked on top of each other. He wonders if the roaches have drowned yet in all this rain.

 _Stop that_ , Ben scolds himself, circling back around to the diner so he can grab lunch. He's been in smaller towns than this, and slept in uglier places, too; it's just that he's hungry and tired and it won't stop raining and he's alone. But monsters don't care about your feelings, as Dean would say. Get the job done and move on.

Ben slouches into the mostly-warm diner and tries to smile at the lady behind the counter, shaking water out of his hair. There's a moose head above the register. The only other person there, drinking coffee and poring over a newspaper, turns around at the sound of him opening the door. Ben sees the long blonde braid and then meets a pair of icy blue eyes.

_"Claire?"_

"You need a table, hon?" asks the waitress, looking back and forth between the two of them, but Claire slaps down the newspaper and strides up to Ben.

"Are you following me?"

"You're okay," Ben says blankly. "You're okay, you're—what are you doing here?"

"Are," she says over him, "you following me."

"No!" Ben's cursed her lie detector plenty of times, but he's glad for it now. "No, God, I had no idea what _happened_ to you, you just _left_ , I was—have you been getting my voicemails? Why are _you_ here?"

"If I'd known you were going to take this job, I would never have bothered." Claire backs away without taking her eyes off him, scooping up her backpack and throwing a ten dollar bill at the gawking woman across the counter. "Thanks for the coffee." As soon as Ben moves towards her, she slips past him and out the door.

"Oh, come on!" Ben gives the waitress a helpless look, blurts "This isn't my fault," and then rushes back into the rain.

The bell above the door jangles at his exit, and Claire turns, frustration in her clenched fists. "Go hunt that stupid wendigo," she says. "That's what you came here for, isn't it? What do you want from me?"

"I want you to _answer_ me." Ben tugs his jacket collar higher and jams his hands in his pockets; Claire, of course, isn't even shivering in the icy rain pelting them both. "You vanished in the middle of the night! You couldn't have even woken me up to say you were leaving? For all I knew you could be _dead_!"

"I don't owe you any explanation," says Claire. "And I can take care of myself."

"We're supposed to be in this together, remember?" Ben takes a step closer. "I know you didn't want Hael to say any of that, but whatever happened between you and Castiel, it's okay. You don't have to run away from me."

Claire flinches at the name, and her face hardens even further. "You don't get to decide if it's _okay_ ," she snaps. "But I guess the only thing that matters here is how it's affecting _you_ , right?"

"That's not what I—"

"You have been dying to rescue me since the first time we met, Ben Braeden, and guess what? I don't need you." She turns and stalks away, heading toward the only other car in the lot. Over her shoulder she adds, "Next time a girl walks out on you, take the hint."

 _"Hey!"_ Ben's mom always taught him not to get in another person's space when he's angry, but Claire is not listening and he refuses to lose her again. He runs across the wet gravel and plants himself right in front of her. "That's not fair," Ben says, trying to keep his voice calm. "I have been bending over backwards trying to give you your space. I'm not doing this because I think you're a girl I have to rescue, okay? I'm doing this because you're my friend."

"Get out of my way," says Claire.

"Tell me what you're so afraid of," Ben retorts, not moving. She won't look him in the eye, and he takes encouragement from that, some sign that maybe he's getting through to her. "Now that I know what happened to you, I can help, all right? Dean knows Castiel. Once we find him, we can—"

"I know that," Claire interrupts. Her brows are drawn in a tight, angry line. "You think I'm not aware that he would come the second Dean called? You think I don't know finding the Righteous Man is my best shot at ever seeing my father again? Why do you think I came with you in the first place?"

Ben flinches, surely as if she'd slapped him. "What are you talking about?"

Claire crosses her arms and stares him down, unblinking despite the rain running down her face. "You're trying to find Dean Winchester," she says. "I want to find Castiel. I knew if you got what you wanted, I would too."

"But—" To Ben's horror, he can feel the words failing him, his throat tensing up. "You said—"

"That's the only reason I ever stayed," says Claire, taking her time to let each word hit. A muscle jumps in her jaw. "I was using you. Now I'm done. So _leave me alone_."

"Fine!" Ben yells, and hates how his voice shakes. He blinks rain out of his stinging eyes. "Fine then, go, go—be alone, I hope you stay alone your whole life! Since you obviously can't stand to have anyone else know _one single thing_ about you!"

She shoves him out of the way, actually puts both hands on his chest and pushes, and Ben nearly falls into the mud. Claire fumbles open the door of a rusty old sedan and climbs inside without looking back.

"I hope no one else is stupid enough to be nice to you!" he shouts. "Thanks for nothing!" The car's engine roars, and Ben purposely turns around so he can't see which direction she goes when she drives away. The rain is coming down harder than ever. "I don't need you," he says, in a smaller voice, and there's no one around to call him for a lie.

* * *

Here's the thing: there are hours and hours to go yet before the sun starts to sink. Ben isn't exactly hungry anymore. And he has, in his hands, a map of the two most likely locations to find the wendigo's lair.

He tries to keep his head cool for Katie's sake, he does. But when he dials Tamara, he finds one of her numbers is out of service and the other goes straight to voicemail. Aaron made it pretty clear the only thing he was only interested in killing angels. He could call Katie back, see if Haley has anyone else out willing to drive a couple of days for a hard day's work. But that's a long time from now.

_I was using you. Now I'm done._

He's doing it for the people the wendigo has killed and could kill, he tells himself. He'll be careful and turn back if it gets dicey. He's not thinking of Claire being reluctantly impressed or of one day telling Dean he killed a wendigo on his own when he was only seventeen. Maybe it isn't the best idea in the world, but Ben's young and stupid and angry and so far he's survived every life-threatening situation he's ever been in, so how bad can it be?

Of his two options, the first place Ben checks turns out to be where the wendigo is staying. He knows this because he finds a human arm half-buried in the mud near the entrance. _Just_ an arm, broken off somewhere between the elbow and shoulder, and it's been stripped clean to the bone from the wrist onward. There's a bloodsoaked work glove still attached to the hand—probably not enough meat to bother, Ben thinks, and then the smell hits him and he has to puke into some nearby bushes.

When he's finished and washed out his mouth, Ben delicately unclasps an old waterlogged watch from around the arm's wrist. It's probably Haley's hunter friend, but it definitely belonged to _someone_ , and since he's torching this whole place he figures any identifying items will be a comfort to any loved ones left behind. It isn't, he admits to himself, something Dean would think very highly of, wasting time like this. But Ben knows the importance of closure. He cleans the watch and his hands with some of the water from his bottle and slips it in his back pocket.

Ben turns back to the mineshaft, deliberating. The rain will wash away any anti-wendigo warding he tried to put down, which means it'd be impossible to stop and rest if he turns back now. He's freezing and exhausted, but if he got _really_ tired, and the wendigo decided to go hunting...

Well, Ben doesn't like his chances of getting back to civilization without running into the thing, and he likes the chances he'll walk away if it surprises him even less.

Ben readies his flare gun, clicks on his flashlight, and ducks inside.

It's slightly drier in here, even if it is still cold enough to make his breath fog. The wendigo's probably holed up pretty far in, right? Ben sweeps his beam around, cautious.

It lands on a pair of glittering eyes.

Ben was thinking of it like an animal, hoping to catch it unawares and sated from its last meal, but the wendigo was human an age ago and it's smarter than he gave it credit for. He lets off a shot but the wendigo is _fast_ and it manages sideswipe him as the flare goes wide, sharp claws raking across his forehead and knocking him prone as the red light bursts and then fades. Ben gets out of the way and fires another blind shot to get it away from him, but there's blood pouring from the cut above his eye and he hears the sizzle of rock telling him it doesn't hit. The wendigo screams in fury, moving faster than he can track. It blows past him again and this time pain blooms in his side, hot blood gushing out over his freezing skin. He scrambles backwards until he hits a wall, struggling to get upright as his entire torso convulses. There's a rush of wind, and then silence from inside the cave.

"Come on," Ben slurs, wiping the blood off his rain-slicked face. He can still hear the rain but his ears are ringing too badly to orient himself in the dim light, waiting for the wendigo to show itself again. "Come get me, you piece of shit, or are you gonna leave me behind too?"

Long, inhuman fingers reach up from the dark and grasp Ben around both ankles. He screams as the claws dig into his tendons and drag down, pulling him off his feet and his feet nearly off his body as he kicks desperately at something he can't see.

 _Don't drop your weapon_ , Dean says in his memory. _No matter what happens to you, do not let go of your weapon._

Ben will never see Dean again if he doesn't make it out of this. He can't hear anything over his own panicked gasping but if the wendigo is holding onto him that means he knows where it is. He points the flare gun down his body, hands quivering, and fires.

For a split second he sees a horrible face, skin taut over sunken cheeks, teeth sharp and bloody. He thinks if he's going down, he'll at least take this thing with him. The wendigo shrieks, dislodging its claws from his legs, and the flare—misses.

It hits him then that he's really gonna die. He's bleeding from the head, the stomach, now from both legs, and he couldn't make his way back down the mountain even if the wendigo dropped dead this very second. Katie was right, he should never have come up here, he's going to break her heart and Marie's too and no one will ever tell Claire what happened to him—

He wants to die on a happy thought. If there's a Hell and angels there's gotta be a Heaven, right? Maybe he'll get to see his mom again. That wouldn't be so bad. Ben stares at the rock ceiling of the cave until the wendigo's face appears in front of him again, its greedy mouth singed but open, lowering itself over his limp and bleeding body. Ben closes his eyes.

There's a burst of bright, bright light.

Heat washes across his numb skin as the flare finds its mark. Another _bang_ , and the wendigo stumbles back, screeching with malice. Ben blinks, squinting toward the sound, and for the briefest second he sees a silhouette against the mine shaft's entrance, burned into his eyes long after everything goes dark.

It's Claire.

 _Bang. Bang._ She strides forward, unbloodied, lit by the light of the storm and the fire, both hands on her gun just like he taught her. She fires until she's out of shots, blasting the wendigo to embers, and when at last its shrieks die off she drops to her knees beside Ben.

"Ben? Are you alive?"

Ben opens his mouth and blood gurgles out. "Hoooooly shit."

"I'll take that as a yes," Claire says tightly. She's tugging at his clothes, pulling up his shirt to check his wounds. Ben smells antiseptic cream.

"Found me," he says in wonder. "Claaaire."

"Please shut up," Claire says. "No, God, you have to keep talking. You can't go to sleep. I can't believe this."

"How," Ben wants to know, and then lets out a whine as she presses down on the gash across his stomach. Whatever she's doing to him, it _hurts_.

"There's only one of everything in this town," Claire reminds him. "One diner, one motel, one fucking hiking trail. When I didn't see your truck at the motel it wasn't hard to figure out where you'd gone. And I." She gets quiet. "I was worried about you."

Ben closes his eyes, smiling in spite of himself. She cares about him after all. That's a happy thought.

"Ben?" Her voice sounds like it's a thousand miles away. " _Ben._ I did _not_ hike all the way up this mountain in the dark for you to die on me now."

"Sorry," Ben slurs, but doesn't open his eyes.

" _Hey_ ," Claire snarls, and suddenly both her warm hands are grabbing his face, forcing him to look at her. Ben fights his way back to consciousness just to see. "You stay the hell awake, do you understand me?"

She's so pretty. Her eyes are so blue, even with just the dim light of the flashlight to see them by. She's never touched him this much before. Ben clumsily pats one of her hands with his own, spits out more blood, and mumbles something unintelligible just to show he's still there.

"...bandages," Claire is saying, but it sounds funny in his ears. "...last long...stand up?"

"Mf," Ben says, and is struck with a wave of dizziness and agony as she pulls him to his feet. It's a good thing he puked earlier, because the pain now makes him dry heave. The holes in his ankles crack as soon as he tries to put weight on them, and he screams, clinging to Claire's shoulder.

"Shit." Claire turns so her back is towards him, and Ben wails, afraid of losing his only support. The rain drowns out her voice, and she has to repeat herself, grabbing his hand and squeezing as she watches him over her shoulder. "Just get...carry you, all right?"

It takes him a while to understand her meaning, and once he grasps the concept it's even more difficult to hoist himself onto her back to be carried. He's taller and considerably heavier than she is, and Claire staggers when his full weight first settles on her, Ben's arms around her shoulders and his useless legs dangling on either side of her hips. Ben would feel a lot weirder about it if his insides weren't trying to explode in pain every time he draws a breath.

"...the hell off this mountain," Claire says. She takes one unsteady step, then another, Ben holding on with whatever strength he has left. He feels her shoulders square under his grip. " _Do not die._ "

That's a tall order. Ben can barely see, his arms aren't working very well, and everything is cold except Claire against him. The adrenaline rush has left him now and he's so tired. He rests his forehead against the wet blonde hair in front of him, rain blurring away even the pain.

But every time he starts fading, Claire drags him back to consciousness. The sharp words she's aimed at him since the day they met have a note of pleading behind them now, and though Ben can't quite process speech, he knows her. She climbed the mountain to find him and he knows they mean _don't you dare leave me_.

Claire never cuts him any slack, he thinks, the mountain and mud and rain very far away. It's one of the many things he loves about her.

Each second takes an eternity to pass, but he has no memory of it when it's over. It's dark and cold and there should be no way they can travel with him like this, but they do anyway, Claire keeping Ben on her back through sheer force of will as the trail of his blood gets washed off the rocks behind them.

And then, finally, a road. Flashing blue and red lights. An ambulance? Ben fights when they try to pull him from Claire's back, terrified that she'll disappear as soon as he stops touching her. She's all that's keeping him here and if she lets him go he won't be able to stay.

"It's okay!" she says, as people swarm around them. "Ben, I'm right here, let them help you, please—"

He reaches for her, his bloody hand finding one of hers. She squeezes tight.

"It's okay," Claire says again. "I'll be there when you wake up. So you have to wake up, okay?"

Claire told him to never make promises he can't keep. "Claire," he says, the only word that matters. And then finally the world goes dark.

* * *

Consciousness returns in little pieces. Underneath him is a bed, squishy and uncomfortable, and most of his body is weighed down with blankets. Somewhere in the distance there's a TV droning commercials. It smells like cleaners and medicine. There's something pinching his veins in the back of one hand, and on his opposite wrist he feels the familiar weight of his palo santo bracelet.

Ben opens his eyes. He's in a hospital. The room is dim, just a faint glow coming from beneath the door to the hallway and a sliver of streetlight from the window beside him. Both legs are in casts, there's an impressive number of tubes and wires hooked up to him, and it's dark but someone gave his bracelet back to him because he didn't die. Heart lurching, he looks around for Claire.

She's curled up in the chair by the bed, fast asleep. Here just like she promised.

His eyes sting abruptly, and Ben has to blink a few times to keep Claire in focus. It's so strange to see her asleep; Claire wakes before him and goes to bed after, it's been that way since they started traveling together, and she's just—softer like this. Her braid is coming undone and there's still smudges of blood all over her because she climbed up a mountain and brought Ben back down because she wouldn't let him die.

Ben has to swallow several times before he can finally rasp out, "Claire."

She jolts, eyes open at once. "Ben," she says, unfolding herself from the chair. "You weren't supposed to wake up yet, they said—how are you feeling?"

Ben looks down at himself. He's pretty sure he's on a _lot_ of drugs right now, because the majority of his body is covered in bandages but there's just a vague floaty feeling when he tries to focus on his midsection. "Water?" he croaks.

"Of course." She hurries to fetch the pitcher on a nearby counter and brings it back to fill his cup.

He met Claire in a room like this, Ben thinks. He had no idea what he was getting himself into when he talked her into burning that shtriga with him. He's never met someone harder to get along with, or more particular about interacting with others. He's never had to work so hard just to earn a tiny sliver of trust from someone.

And still she came for him.

Ben's hands don't work right and he has to use a straw to drink out of the little paper cup. When he's finished, he says, voice clearer, "Thank you."

Claire takes the cup back. "Let me know if you want more."

"No," Ben says, "I mean thank you. You saved my life."

There's a long silence in which Claire pointedly fails to look at him. "I guess now we're finally even," she says. She sits back down in her chair and clears her throat. "Ben, I owe you an apology."

"You don't have to—"

"No, listen," Claire says over him. "I planned this out and I'm gonna forget if you don't shut up." He smiles, but she's studying his bedspread and won't meet his eyes. She takes a deep breath. "It was shitty of me to disappear in the middle of the night without telling you. I know how it feels to get left behind, and I'm sorry I put you through that." She clears her throat. "It was—correct, what I said, that back when this started I decided to go with you for my own reasons." Ben ignores the pang in his chest as she rushes on. "But I was lying when I said that was why I stayed. You have every right to hate me, but I want you to know it hasn't been just about that for a while now."

Ben wishes he could touch her, but now that neither of them are in danger of dying he doesn't know if it's okay anymore. "I don't hate you."

Claire meets his eyes and then looks away again. "I—don't hate you either," she says. "And I'd like to keep hunting with you, if you'll have me."

For a minute all Ben can do is nod, too choked up to speak. "Yeah," he manages finally, "yeah, that's—that'd be okay." He sniffs and tries to surreptitiously wipe his eyes with his shoulder. She looks up at him and he grins, trying to break the tension. "I mean, clearly I need it, huh?"

"You _absolutely_ need it," Claire says, and he doesn't think he's imagining the relief in her voice. "Do you have any idea how much blood you lost? You're lucky those gouges across your stomach didn't hit anything important."

Something occurs to Ben then, and he stares around the hospital room with new eyes. "Claire, whose insurance am I on?"

"What difference does that make?" But she must see the panic building in his expression, because she says, "I gave them the card you had in your wallet. It's not your real name, it says Wally Henderson or something, but I figured if you had it—"

"We gotta leave." Ben tugs at the IV needle in his hand until it comes loose, wincing at the way his stomach pulls under the bandages. "Look, there's a wheelchair in the corner, help me get out of here before they come back."

Claire stands, looking from him to the door. "If you're secretly a felon, now would be a really good time to tell me."

"I'm not a felon!" Much to his chagrin, Ben discovers that he still has enough blood in his body to blush. "Look, Dean made me that ID a couple years ago and it has my real birthday on it. I'm—technically a minor."

She stares. "Excuse me?"

"Just for a few more months!" Ben sits up enough to swing his legs over the side of the bed, and discovers that the drugs he's on must be _really good._ He will miss them. "I turn eighteen in June, it's not a big deal, but I don't want freaking Child Protective Services coming in here asking why I didn't have enough adult supervision not to get eaten by a bear, okay?"

"I _knew_ you were lying," says Claire, though she does bring the wheelchair for him to slide into. "Every time someone asked how old you were you got cagey. _Seventeen."_

"Yell later," Ben instructs. "Flee now. Katie will let me crash at her place, if she doesn't kill me first."

"One day you and I will leave a hospital and I _won't_ be looking over my shoulder for police," says Claire, but she's still here with him helping him go, and that's all Ben can really ask.

* * *

"No, I will not let you crash at my place after a _wendigo nearly killed you_!" Katie screeches over the phone. "I told you it was a bad idea, but do you ever _fucking_ listen to me! No! You're lucky Claire didn't leave you to rot, you stupid asshole!"

"I said I was sorry," Ben whines. "You were right and I was wrong and I'll owe you forever, okay?"

"You're damn right you will!" After a long pause, probably made longer just to make him sweat, Katie finally huffs. "Look, my apartment is literally too tiny and too full of roaches for an air mattress, but I'll talk to Haley, okay? They let hunters lay up here sometimes if they have nowhere else to go. And you did kill a wendigo."

"Claire killed it," Ben corrects, sullen. "I just got my ass kicked."

"Well then it's a good thing she came back, isn't it?"

Ben looks over at Claire in the driver's seat, sunlight just striking her face as they emerge from the storm. "Yeah."

"Ugh," Katie says. "Come back here so I can hit you in person, okay?" She sighs, and then adds for good measure: "Idiot."

Ben's too exhausted to talk much on the drive, and Claire seems more than happy to let him sleep most of the way to Colorado, though it gets harder once the pain meds wear off and every dip in the road jostles Ben's shredded ankles and guts. Claire never says she's worried, but with every involuntary whimper he makes, Ben feels the truck speed up.

Katie gasps aloud when she sees Ben being wheeled through the door, butterfly bandage over one eye and still in his hospital robe because he didn't want to attempt pants with his feet in the state they are. "Benjamin Isaac Braeden," she snaps, in a tone straight from Marie, and then she covers her mouth as her face crumples.

"I'm okay," Ben hurries to assure her, sitting up a little straighter in the chair. "I'm totally fine, see?"

"That's a lie," Claire mutters from behind him, but Katie doesn't hear.

"I can't fucking believe you," she says, making a fist as though to punch him but faltering when no undamaged target presents itself. "Don't you ever do that to me again. You look like shit."

"I feel like shit," Ben confesses. "Tylenol is not that strong."

"You deserve it," says Katie, and she leans down to wrap his shoulders in a fierce hug.

Haley and Tommy appear from the kitchen, drawn by the commotion. "You made it," Tommy says. "God, I'm so sorry, we never meant to drag other people into our fight. You never should have been out there by yourself." He looks at Haley, then wraps an arm around her shoulders. "But you killed it? The wendigo is dead?"

Ben winces. "I didn't," he says, and turns his wheelchair to include Claire in the circle. "Claire did. You were right, it was stupid to go alone. I would've been lunch meat if she hadn't found me when she did."

Haley crosses to Claire and holds her hand out. "Thank you," she says. "I can't tell you how much that means to us."

Claire ducks her head and returns the handshake. "Thanks for letting him stay here."

"You're both staying," Tommy says firmly. "We set up a room for you to use as long as you need. My little brother's a nurse, too, so he can help you with those stitches and all. Now, how about something to eat?"

The next several days pass in a blur of concerned faces and inadequate pain medication. Tamara calls him back on the second day, sounding pleased to hear he and Claire managed to bag the thing on their own, and Ben puts her new number in his contacts list with a small swell of pride. Missouri calls, too, and shortly thereafter Aaron appears, hovering in the door with a piece of purple construction paper in his hands.

"My sib made you a get well card," he says gruffly, tossing it into Ben's lap. "I told them why I was stopping by, and they really like crayons."

"Did you drive here all the way from Lawrence?" Ben asks, astonished, but Aaron shakes his head.

"I actually live outside Boulder, when we're not staying with Missouri. Emily hooked us up with a nice place." He shrugs. "I don't visit here often, but. Since you're sick and all."

Ben opens the card, touched. It says GET BETER in alternating blue and green letters, with scribbled red hearts and something in the corner that looks like a fighter jet. "Thanks, man."

"Yeah." Aaron clears his throat, looking behind him toward the bustling bar. After a moment, he says, "How's, uh. How's Claire?"

Ben puts the card on the bedside table, suddenly wary. There are too many safeguards at the Salt Round for Aaron to be possessed or anything, but he's an angel hunter, and Claire is—well. "She's fine."

Aaron lets out a breath. "I've been thinking about it a lot since Arizona," he admits. "About Gloria, and—what Claire said, that she'd be doing her a favor. I already knew angels were pieces of shit, but that's messed up."

"No kidding." Ben pushes himself up a little straighter in the bed. "Claire doesn't talk about it," he says carefully. It's been most of the day since he last saw her, and truth be told he isn't sure where she goes while he's laid up in bed. Their silences are more comfortable together these days, but they are silences. "It was super messed up, what happened, but—she's handling it, I think. I think she's okay."

"Good. That's good." He clears his throat. "Well. I'm glad both of you are okay. I'll see you around, huh?"

"You too," Ben says, and when he falls back asleep, he dreams about angels.

One week passes, then two. Ben meets other-Ben, the third Collins sibling, who turns out to be a nurse; he takes out Ben's stitches when he refuses the hospital again and slowly helps Ben teach himself to walk. Claire comes in and out, sometimes watching his progress with unsettling intensity and sometimes nowhere to be seen. Katie confides that she's seen Claire in the kitchen several times, helping Tommy with the dishes—paying her debt for their stay, even though the wendigo is dead.

And then one day Ben wakes up and sees that it's March 29th; the date he's certain Sam and Dean disappeared, and almost an entire year since he left home.

He wakes before Claire, for once, and decides to celebrate the newfound use of his feet by driving for the first time since his injuries. He stops at a little shop in town and buys a postcard for Marie, a nondescript but pretty picture of a mountain at sunrise. He's never sure what to write, aside from _I'm okay_ and _I love you_ and sometimes _I'm sorry_. Maybe one day he'll know what more to say.

Claire's sitting on the roof of the Salt Round when he gets back. "I was wondering where you went," she calls down.

"Just wanted to clear my head," Ben says. "I've been getting stir-crazy cooped up in bed."

She laughs a little. "Think you're up for the ladder?"

Ben decides not to think she's kidding, because if she wants to be up there he will make it happen. "Only one way to find out."

He's ginger for the first few rungs, but if he mostly uses his arms the ladder doesn't actually give him too much trouble, so it's well worth the view once he makes it to the top. The warding Claire applied so carefully is still all here too. Ben sits on one of the dusty cushions Haley keeps out here, and Claire settles on a different one beside him. The quiet is its own presence, this high up, and after a while Ben can't help but break it.

"It's been a year now. Since Dean left." He picks at a bit of bandage poking out from his jeans and says, "I was hoping I would have found him by now."

It's a long time before Claire finally speaks. "When my father disappeared, I was ten."

Ben's pulse jumps. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to," he says.

Claire shakes her head. "You already know most of it. It's better if—if I explain."

Ben doesn't say anything. She's staring toward the sun off the roof's edge, and Ben does the same, wanting to give her as much privacy as he can for this precious thing she's offered.

"Dad was hearing voices," Claire continues. "He said God was talking to him. That he had a higher purpose. My mom thought he was crazy, of course, but he wouldn't take the pills she got him." Out of the corner of his eye, Ben sees Claire's hands move to smooth the fabric covering her legs. "And then one night I woke up, and there was this bright light outside. I ran downstairs to see what had happened, and I saw my dad, standing there, looking at his hands. But it wasn't him anymore." She takes a shuddery breath. "Castiel saw me, he must've seen I didn't understand. He said, 'I am not your father.' And he took my dad and disappeared."

She stops—collecting herself, maybe. Ben wants to offer her something, a touch or a kind word, but there's nothing to be said. He keeps his silence.

"We thought he was dead," Claire says. "We had a funeral for him, just me and Mom, to try and move forward. But then, almost a year later, he came back." She looks over at Ben finally. " _Dad_ came back, not Castiel inside him. You can tell the difference."

"Yeah," Ben says, remembering his mother's black eyes, the knife in her hand against his throat.

"He had escaped," Claire says. "The angels were angry with Castiel, so they took him back to Heaven and let my dad go. He came home and he swore he didn't want anything to do with any of it ever again. And I thought—" She smiles, a hard expression that doesn't reach her eyes. "I thought that was the end of it, you know?"

"It's not your fault," says Ben, because even though she hasn't said it yet he already knows this story gets worse. Claire laughs bitterly.

"It turns out, demons are really interested in getting their hands on an ex-vessel. Dad didn't know anything, of course, but they didn't care. Two of them possessed our neighbors and tried to take my dad back with them. The Winchesters showed up and fought them off—I guess it was the first time it occurred to them that their pet angel was wearing a real person." She swallows. "They didn't know that a demon had possessed my mom, too."

Ben opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. Claire draws her knees up to her chest.

"The demon took me to this warehouse outside of town and tied me up. Then it called my dad and told him he'd better come find us, alone, or else—what was it?" She laughs again. "Or it would wear me and my mom for meat necklaces, that was it."

"Claire—"

"My dad came, of course. We were his family. He loved us." She presses her knuckles against the bridge of her nose, then sits up straight, her face going hard. "While I was tied to that chair waiting to die, I heard a voice in the back of my head telling me that I could save them. My mom, my dad, everyone. I would have the mighty wrath of Heaven at my disposal." She blinks once, slowly. "I believed him. I said yes."

Ben lifts a hand, then puts it back down. If something had come to him when Crowley took them, promising to save his mother, he would have made the same choice.

"We laid waste to our enemies," says Claire, and in that moment her voice sounds exactly like Hael. "We smote the demons and fulfilled God's command. We were righteous. We followed orders." Her next sentence isn't in English, and her eyes are far away.

"Hey, hey." Ben does touch her now, just a little, on her shoulder, to bring her back to him. Says her name—hers, not Castiel's.

She starts, looking at him with wide eyes. She looks—young. It's not an expression he's ever seen her wear.

"You did what you had to do," he tells her. "Demons, they don't—they don't care about anything. You would all have died."

"She shot my dad," Claire says. "The demon, I mean, the one in my mom. And Castiel did _nothing_. What good was my dad to him anymore? Who cared if he bled to death on some warehouse floor right in front of his family? Castiel had his vessel." She looks away. "But my dad begged him—choking on his own blood, he could barely speak at all— 'Take me, take me, please.'"

"He knew what it was like," Ben realizes. "He was trying to save you."

"We were supposed to save _him_!" Claire bursts out. Her eyes are bright, but still she doesn't cry. "Castiel _promised_ , he promised me we would, that was the _deal_ , that was why I said—" She covers her mouth with both hands, as though to make sure the word cannot accidentally escape her again. She buries her face in them. "But he didn't save anyone at all," she says, then drops her hands on her lap. "He lied to me and he used me and he then _left me_. And I tried _so_ _hard_ to keep him," Claire says, voice dangerously close to breaking. "I just wasn't strong enough. I couldn't make him stay, and I didn't save anyone either."

Ben bites his lip. He doesn't want to ask, but he can't see when he'll get another chance and he needs to know. "And is...your mom…?"

"That's a funny story too," says Claire, like now the words have started coming out of her they just aren't stopping. "She survived a demon parading her around, she survived an exorcism by Sam Winchester, but you know what she didn't survive? An appendectomy." There's no humor in her smile. "Turns out she's allergic to anaesthesia. And when I prayed to Castiel to help her, like he swore to my father he would, he didn't come. Nobody did. She just died."

"I'm sorry," says Ben. He knows just how inadequate that is, but it's all he has to offer. "Claire, I'm so sorry."

"It's fine." She winces and rubs her temples; clearly, that was a lie. After a long moment, she smiles at Ben sidelong, still miraculously dry-eyed. "Congratulations, you've inherited a giant mess."

"Yes," Ben says, "but I like you."

Claire makes a face and falls silent again.

Ben shifts, his new scars protesting this position he's been sitting in. "I get why you didn't tell me before," he says eventually. "I mean, I'm glad you did now. But I told you I couldn't say words at all after my mom died. To anyone. So, I get it."

Claire takes a deep breath. "I just didn't want you to treat me differently." Ben hears the unspoken end of that sentence, too, the part she can't bring herself to say: _I liked how you treated me before. I didn't want it to change._

She really does like being friends with him.

"Well, I promise to make bad jokes whenever you need me," Ben says. "And if you want to find Castiel—I'll help you with that too."

"He's still friends with Dean," Claire warns. "I don't think my plans align with what the Winchesters would do."

"We'll burn that bridge when we get to it," Ben says, which makes her smile a little. He catches her eye and says, "I'm on your side. No matter what happens, I'll have your back, okay? Wait." He does some mental rewording. "I _fully intend_ to have your back, if and when we run into Castiel and he needs an ass-kicking."

Now she laughs for real, just a little thickly. "You're too nice to me."

"Nah," Ben says, face heating up a little against the cold. "But hey. No more running off, okay? I'll stick with you as long as you stick with me."

"It could be years," Claire warns, as she has many times before.

"One down," Ben points out. "I'm not giving up."

Claire takes a deep breath. Then she sticks out her hand. "Sold. Partners, until we find our dads."

Ben takes it, and they shake. It's cold out here, but her hand is warm in his own. "You got it. Partners."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for being patient and sticking with us, guys. We’ve worked so _so_ hard on this, we really hope you enjoy it and that it was worth the wait!
> 
> If you liked this story, you can check out [our tumblr](http://cambionverse.tumblr.com/), where we post updates, fanworks, and other cool goodies between stories!


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